“So much the better for them,” observed the minister, warmly.

“Do you think that?  Well, we shall see.  I must try and make it so, as well as I can.  I am but where I was before, as Dr. Hamilton said.  Poor Dr. Hamilton!  He is so sorry.”

Mr. Cardross did not ask about what, but turned to the table and began cutting open the leaves of a book.  For Helen, she drew nearer to Lord Cairnforth’s chair, and laid over the poor, weak, wasted fingers her soft, warm hand.

The tears sprang to the young earl’s eyes.  “Don’t speak to me,” he whispered; “it is all over now; but it was very hard for a time.”

“I know it.”

“Yes—­at least as much as you can know.”

Helen was silent.  She recognized, as she had never recognized before, the awful individuality of suffering which it had pleased God to lay upon this one human being—­suffering at which even the friends who loved him best could only stand aloof and gaze, without the possibility of alleviation.

“Ay,” he said, at last, “it is all over:  I need try no more experiments.  I shall just sit still and be content.”

What was the minute history of the experiments he had tried, how much bodily pain they had cost him, and through how much mental pain he had struggled before he attained that “content,” he did not explain even to Helen.  He turned the conversation to the books which Mr. Cardross was cutting, and many other books, of which he had bought a whole cart-load for the minister’s library.  Neither then, nor at any other time, did he ever refer, except in the most cursory way, to his journey to London.

But Helen noticed that for a long while—­weeks, nay, months, he seemed to avoid more than ever any conversation about himself.  He was slightly irritable and uncertain of mood, and disposed to shut himself up in the Castle, reading, or seeming to read, from morning till night.  It was not till a passing illness of the minister’s in some degree forced him that he reappeared at the Manse, and fell into his old ways of coming and going, resuming his studies with Mr. Cardross, and his walks with Helen—­or rather drives, for he had ceased to be carried in Malcolm’s arms.

“I am a man, now, or ought to be,” he said once, as a reason for this, after which no one made any remarks on the subject.  Malcolm still retained his place as the earl’s close attendant—­as faithful as his shadow, almost as silent.

But the next year or so made a considerable alteration in Lord Cairnforth.  Not in growth—­the little figure never grew any bigger than that of a boy of ten or twelve; but the childish softness passed from the face; it sharpened, and hardened, and became that of a young man.  The features developed; and a short black beard, soft and curly, for it had never known the razor, added character to what, in ordinary men, would have been considered a very handsome face.  It had none of the painful expression so often seen in deformed persons, but more resembled those sweet Italian heads of youthful saints—­Saint Sebastian’s, for instance—­which the old masters were so fond of painting; and though there was a certain melancholy about it when in repose, during conversation it brightened up, and was the cheerfullest, most sunshiny face imaginable.