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"See what my son himself says and thank God he had the grace to say it that I am on no account to go to you; that he 'will turn writer's clerk, or tutor, or any thing, rather than encroach farther on Lord Cairnforth's generosity.." "Poor boy! poor boy!" "Then you don't think him altogether a bad boy?" appealed Mrs. Bruce, pitifully.
Fate had not been altogether cruel to her; it had given her a child. "Isn't he a bonnie bairn?" she whispered, as once again she knelt down by Lord Cairnforth's chair, and brought the little face down so that he could see it and touch it. He did touch it with his feeble fingers the small soft cheek the first baby-cheek he had ever beheld.
"And now, papa," added she, for her watchful eye detected Lord Cairnforth's pale face and wearied air, "let us say good-night and good-by." Long after, they remembered, all of them, what an exceedingly quiet and ordinary good-by it was, none having the slightest feeling that it was more than a temporary parting.
Her woman's heart, which looked beyond the pain of suffering into the beauty of suffering nobly endured, even as faith looks through "the grave and gate of death" into the glories of immortality Helen's heart was scarcely sad, but very glad and proud. The day after Lord Cairnforth's coming of age Mr. Menteith formally resigned his trust.
It was a marriage, externally, both natural and suitable; the young couple being of equal age and circumstances, and withal tolerably well acquainted with one another, for it appeared the captain had begun daily visits to the Manse from the very day of Lord Cairnforth's departure.
It pierced to the core of Lord Cairnforth's heart; and yet and yet he felt that strange sense of exultation and delight. Even Malcolm noticed this. "Your lordship has gotten gude news," said he. "Is it about Miss Helen? She's coming home?" "Yes. We must start for Edinburg at once, and we'll bring her back with us."
He could come to no other conclusion than that Captain Bruce had married Helen with the same motive which must have induced his appearance at the castle, and his eager and successful efforts to ingratiate himself there namely, money; that the fortune which he had himself missed might accrue to him through his union with Lord Cairnforth's heiress. How had he possibly accomplished this?
"His lordship may live to be an auld man yet," said some one to Malcolm, and Malcolm indignantly repudiated the possibility of any thing else. The minister was left a little lonely during this week of Lord Cairnforth's coming home, but he did not seem to feel it.
And so out of babyhood into boyhood, and thence into youth, grew the earl's adopted son; for practically it became that relationship, though no distinct explanation was ever given, or any absolute information vouchsafed, for indeed there was none who had a right to inquire; still, the neighborhood and the public at large took it for granted that such were Lord Cairnforth's intentions toward his little cousin.
Bruce," who sometimes appeared among Lord Cairnforth's guests, and whom, though she was too retiring to attract much notice, every body who did notice was sure to approve. She took her accustomed place by the earl's side, and plunged at once, in Helen's own way, into the business which had brought her hither. "I am not come to beg or to borrow, do not think it only to ask advice.
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