“Helen,” Lord Cairnforth said, after he had sat thinking a while, “I wanted to consult you about Captain Bruce.  How do you like him?  That is, do you still continue to like him, for I know you did at first?”

“And I do still.  I feel so very sorry for him.”

“Only, my dear”—­Lord Cairnforth sometimes called her “my dear,” and spoke to her with a tender, superior wisdom—­“one’s link to one’s friends ought to be a little stronger than being sorry for them; one ought to respect them.  One must respect them before one can trust them very much—­with one’s property, for instance.”

“Do you mean,” said straightforward Helen, “that you have any thoughts of making Captain Bruce your heir?”

“No, certainly not; but I have grave doubts whether I ought not to remember him in my will, only I wished to see his health re-established first, since, had he continued as delicate as when he came, he might not even have outlived me.”

“How calmly you talk of all this,” said Helen, with a little shiver.  She, full of life and health, could hardly realize the feeling of one who stood always on the brink of another world, and looking to that world only for real health—­real life.

“I think of it calmly, and therefore speak calmly.  But, dear Helen, I will not grieve you to-day.  There is plenty of time, and all is safe, whatever happens.  I can trust my successor to do rightly.  As for my cousin, I will try him a little longer, lest he prove

   “‘A little more than kin, and less than kind.’”

“There seems no likelihood of that.  He always speaks in the warmest manner of you whenever he comes to the Manse; that is what makes me like him, I fancy; and also, because I would always believe the best of people until I found out to the contrary.  Life would not be worth having if we were continually suspecting every body—­believing every body bad till we had found them out to be good.  If so, with many, I fear we should never find the good out at all.  That is—­I can’t put it cleverly, like you, but I know what I mean.”

Lord Cairnforth smiled.  “So do I, Helen, which is quite enough for us two.  We will talk this over some other time; and meanwhile”—­he looked at her earnestly and spoke with meaning—­“if ever you have an opportunity of being kind to Captain Bruce, remember he is my next of kin, and I wish it.”

“Certainly,” answered Helen.  “But I am never likely to have the chance of doing any kindness to such a very fine gentleman.”

Lord Cairnforth smiled to himself once more, and let the conversation end; afterward—­long afterward, he recalled it, and thought with a strange comfort that then, at least, there was nothing to conceal; nothing but sincerity in the sweet, honest face—­not pretty, but so perfectly candid and true—­with the sun shining on the lint-white hair, and the bright blue eyes meeting his, guileless as a child’s.  Ay, and however they were dimmed with care and washed with tears—­oceans of bitterness—­that innocent, childlike look never, even when she was an old woman, quite faded out of Helen’s eyes.