And yet he was young—­he had married a good wife—­he might mend.  At present, plain and indisputable, his character stood—­ good-natured, kindly—­perhaps not even unlovable—­but destitute of the very foundations of all that constitutes worth in a man—­or woman either—­truthfulness, independence, honor, honesty.  And he was Helen’s husband—­Helen, the true and the good; the poor minister’s daughter, who had been brought up to think that it was better to starve upon porridge and salt than to owe any one a halfpenny!  What sort of a marriage could it possibly turn out to be?

To this question, which Lord Cairnforth asked himself continually, in an agony of doubt, no answer came—­no clue whatsoever, though, from even the first week, Helen’s letters reached the Manse as regularly as clock work.  But they were merely outside letters—­very sweet and loving —­telling her father every thing that could interest him about foreign places, persons, and things; only of herself and her own feelings saying almost nothing.  It was unlikely she should:  the earl laid this comfort to his soul twenty times a day.  She was married now; she could not be expected to be frank as in her girlhood; still, this total silence, so unnatural to her candid disposition, alarmed him.

But there was no resource—­no help.  Into that secret chamber which her own hand thus barred, no other hand could presume to break.  No one could say—­ought to say to a wife, “Your husband is a scoundrel.”

And besides, (to this hope Lord Cairnforth clung with a desperation heroic as bitter), Captain Bruce might not be an irredeemable scoundrel; and he might—­there was still a chance—­have married Helen not altogether from interested motives.  She was so lovable that he might have loved her, or have grown to love her, even though he had slighted her at first.

“He must have loved her—­he could not help it,” groaned the earl, inwardly, when the minister and others stabbed him from time to time with little episodes of the courting days—­the captain’s devotedness to Helen, and Helen’s surprised, fond delight at being so much “made of” by the first lover who had ever wooed her, and a lover whom externally any girl would have been proud of.  And then the agonized cry of another faithful heart went up to heaven—­“God grant he may love her; that she may be happy—­anyhow—­any where!”

But all this while, with the almost morbid prevision of his character, Lord Cairnforth took every precaution that Helen should be guarded, as much as was possible, in case there should befall her that terrible calamity, the worst that can happen to a woman—­of being compelled to treat the husband and father, the natural protector, helper, and guide of herself and her children, as not only her own, but their natural enemy.