How had he possibly accomplished this?  How had he succeeded in making good, innocent, simple Helen love him?  For that she would never have married without love the earl well knew.  By what persuasions, entreaties, or lies—­the housekeeper’s story involved some evident lies—­he had attained his end, remained, and must ever remain, among the mysteries of the many mysterious marriages which take place every day.

And it was all over.  She was married, and gone away.  Doubtless the captain had taken his precautions to prevent any possible hinderance.  That it was a safe marriage legally, even though so little was known of the bridegroom’s antecedent life, seemed more than probable—­certain, seeing that the chief object he would have in this marriage was its legality, to assure himself thereby of the property which should fall to Helen in the event of the earl’s decease.  That he loved Helen for herself, or was capable of loving her or any woman in the one noble, true way, the largest limit of charitable interpretation could hardly suppose possible.

Still, she had loved him—­she must have done so—­with that strange, sudden idealization of love which sometimes seizes upon a woman who has reached—­more than reached—­mature womanhood, and never experienced the passion.  And she had married him, and gone away with him—­left, for his sake, father, brothers, friends—­her one special friend, who was now nothing to her—­nothing!

Whatever emotions the earl felt—­and it would be almost sacrilegious to intrude upon them, or to venture on any idle speculation concerning them—­one thing was clear; in losing Helen, the light of his eyes, the delight of his life was gone.

He sat in his chair quite still, as indeed he always was, but now it was a deathlike quietness, without the least sign of the wonderful mobility of feature and cheerfulness of voice and manner which made people so soon grow used to his infirmity—­sat until his room was prepared.  Then he suffered himself to be carried to his bed, which, for the first time in his life, he refused to leave for several days.

Not that he was ill—­he declined any medical help, and declared that he was only “weary, weary”—­at which, after his long journey, no one was surprised.  He refused to see any body, even Mr. Cardross, and would suffer no one beside him but his old nurse, Mrs. Campbell, whom he seemed to cling to as when he was a little child.  For hours she sat by his bed, watching him, but scarcely speaking a word; and for hours he lay, his eyes wide open, but with that blank expression in them which Mrs. Campbell had first noticed when he sat by the housekeeper’s fire.

“My bairn!  My bairn!” was all she said—­for she loved him.  And, somehow, her love comforted him.  “Ye maun live, ye maun live.  Maybe they’ll need ye yet,” sobbed she, without explaining—­perhaps without knowing—­who “they” meant.  But she knew enough of her “bairn” to know that if any thing would rouse him it was the thought of other folk.