“What can she mean by that?” said Mr. Cardross, watching anxiously the earl’s countenance as he read.

I suppose, what Helen always means, exactly what she says.”

“That is true.  You know we used always to say Helen could hold her tongue, though it wasn’t easy to her, the dear lassie; but she could not say what was not the fact, nor even give the impression of it.  Therefore, if she were unhappy, she would have told me?”

This was meant as a question, but it gained no answer.

“Surely,” entreated the father, anxiously, “surely you do not think the lassie is unhappy?”

“This is not a very happy world,” said the earl, sadly.  “But I do believe that if any thing had been seriously wrong with her Helen would have told us.”

He spoke his real belief.  But he did not speak of a dread far deeper, which had sometimes occurred to him, but which that sad and even bitter postscript now removed, that circumstances could change character, and that Helen Cardross and Helen Bruce were two different women.

As he went home, having arranged to come daily every forenoon to sit with the minister, and to read a little Greek with Duncan, lest the lad’s studies should be interrupted, he decided that, in her father’s state, which appeared to him the more serious the longer he considered it, it was right Helen should come home, and somebody, not Mr. Cardross, ought to urge it upon her.  He determined to do this himself.  And, lest means should be wanting—­though of this he had no reason to fear, his information from all quarters having always been that the Bruce family lived more than well—­luxuriously—­he resolved to offer a gift with which he had not before dared to think of insulting independent Helen—­money.

With difficulty and pains, not intrusting this secret to even his faithful secretary, he himself wrote a few lines, in his own feeble, shaky hand, telling her exactly how things were; suggesting her coming home, and inclosing wherewithal to do it, from “her affectionate old friend and cousin,” from whom she need not hesitate to accept any thing.  But though he carefully, after long consideration, signed himself her “cousin,” he did not once name Captain Bruce.  He could not.

This done, he waited day after day, till every chance of Helen’s not having had time to reply was long over, and still no answer came.  That the letter had been received was more than probable, almost certain.  Every possible interpretation that common sense allowed Lord Cairnforth gave to her silence, and all failed.  Then he let the question rest.  To distrust her, Helen, his one pure image of perfection, was impossible.  He felt it would have killed him—­not his outer life, perhaps, but the life of his heart, his belief in human goodness.

So he still waited, nor judged her either as daughter or friend, but contented himself with doing her apparently neglected duty for her—­ making himself an elder brother to Duncan, and a son to the minister, and never missing a day without spending some hours at the Manse.