And, with a certain amused pleasure, the earl watched Helen’s puzzled air at being made of so much importance, till the stranger appeared.

He was a man of about thirty, though at first sight he seemed older, from his exceedingly worn and sickly appearance.  His lank black hair fell about his thin, sallow face; he wore what we now call the Byron collar and Byron tie—­for it was in the Byron era, when sentimentalism and misery-making were all the fashion.  Certainly the poor captain looked miserable enough, without any pretense of it; for, besides his thin and unhealthy aspect, his attire was in the lowest depth of genteel shabbiness.  Nevertheless, he looked gentlemanly, and clever too; nor was it an unpleasant face, though the lower half of it indicated weakness and indecision; and the eyes—­large, dark, and hollow—­were a little too closely set together, a peculiarity which always gives an uncandid, and often a rather sinister expression to any face.  Still there was something about the unexpected visitor decidedly interesting.

Even Helen looked up from her work once—­twice—­with no small curiosity; she saw so few strangers, and of men, and young men, almost none, from year’s end to year’s end.  Yet it was a look as frank, as unconscious, as maidenly as might have been Miranda’s first glance at Ferdinand.

Captain Bruce did not return her glance at all.  His whole attention was engrossed by Lord Cairnforth.

“My lord, I am so sorry—­so very sorry—­if I startled you by my rudeness.  The group inside was so cheering a sight, and I was a poor weary wayfarer.”

“Do not apologize, Captain Bruce.  I am happy to make your acquaintance.”

“It has been the wish of my life, Lord Cairnforth, to make yours.”

Lord Cairnforth turned upon him eyes sharp enough to make a less acute person than the captain feel that honesty, rather than flattery, was the safest tack to go upon.  He took the hint.

“That is, I have wished, ever since I came home from India, to thank you and Mr. Menteith—­this is Mr. Menteith, I presume?—­for my cadetship, which I got through you.  And though my ill health has blighted my prospects, and after some service—­for I exchanged from the Company’s civil into the military service—­I have returned to England an invalided and disappointed man, still my gratitude is exactly the same, and I was anxious to see and thank you, as my benefactor and my cousin.”

Lord Cairnforth merely bent his head in answer to this long speech, which a little perplexed him.  He, like Helen, was both unused and indifferent to strangers.

But Captain Bruce seemed determined not to be made a stranger.  After the brief ceremony of introduction to the little party, he sat down close to Lord Cairnforth, displacing Helen, who quietly retired, and began to unfold all his circumstances, giving as credentials of identity a medal received for some Indian battle; a letter from his father, the colonel, whose handwriting Mr. Menteith immediately recognized, and other data, which sufficiently proved that he really was the person he assumed to be.