“It’s very true,” said the good minister, disappointed as he was:  “a man must cleave to his wife, and a woman to her husband.  I suppose the captain finds himself better in warm countries—­he always said so.  My bairn will come back when she can—­I know she will.  And the boys are very good—­specially Duncan.”

For Mr. Cardross had now, he thought, discovered germs of ability in his youngest boy, and was concentrating all his powers in educating him for college and the ministry.  This, and his growing absorption in his books, reconciled him more than might have been expected to his daughter’s absence; or else the inevitable necessity of things, which, as we advance in years, becomes so strange and consoling an influence over us, was working slowly upon the good old minister.  He did not seem heart-broken or even heart-wounded—­he did his parish work with unfailing diligence; but as, Sunday after Sunday, he passed from the Manse garden through the kirk-yard, where, green and moss-covered now, was the one white stone which bore the name of “Helen Lindsay, wife of the Reverend Alexander Cardross,” he was often seen to glance at it less sorrowfully than smilingly.  Year by year, the world and its cares were lessening and slipping away from him, as they had long since slipped from her who once shared them all.  She now waited for him in that eternal reunion which the marriage union teaches, as perhaps none other can, to realize as a living fact and natural necessity.

But it was different with the earl.  Sometimes, in an agony of bitterness, he caught himself blaming her—­Helen—­whom her old father never blamed; wondering how much she had found out of her husband’s conduct and character; speculating whether it was possible to touch pitch and not be defiled; and whether the wife of Captain Bruce had become in any way different from, and inferior to, innocent Helen Cardross.

Lord Cairnforth had never answered her letter—­he could not, without being a complete hypocrite; and she had not written again.  He did not expect it—­scarcely wished it—­and yet the blank was sore.  More and more he withdrew from all but necessary associations, shutting himself up in the Castle for weeks together—­neither reading, nor talking much to any one, but sitting quite still—­he always sat quite still—­by the fireside in his little chair.  He felt creeping over him that deadness to external things which makes pain itself seem comparatively almost sweet.  Once he was heard to say, looking wistfully at Mrs. Campbell, who had been telling him with many tears, of a “freend o’ hers” who had just died down at the clachan, “Nurse, I wish I could greet like you.”

The first thing which broke up in his heart this bitter, blighting frost was, as so often happens, the sharp-edged blow of a new trouble.