to her.

"He wishes to have your opinion, as well as my own, about a journey he
is projecting to Edinburg, and some business matters which he desires to
arrange there. I think he would have like to see Captain Bruce too.
Where is he?"

The captain had found this atmosphere of sorrow a little too
overpowering, and had disappeared for a long ride; so Miss Cardross had
been sitting alone all the time.

"Your father has been persuading me, Helen," said the earl, when she
came in, "that I am not quite so useless in the world as I imagined. He
says he has reason to believe, from things Mr. Menteith let fall, that
my dear old friend's widow is not very well provided for, and she and
her children will have a hard battle even now. Mr. Cardross thinks I
can help her very materially, in one way especially. You know I have
made my will?"

"Yes," replied unconscious Helen, "you told me so."

"Mr. Menteith drew it up the last time he was here. How little we
thought it would be really the last time! Ah! Helen, if we could only
look forward!"

"It is best not," said Helen, earnestly.

"Well, my will is made. And though in it I left nothing to Mr. Menteith
himself, seeing that such a return of his kindness would be very
unwelcome, I insisted doing what was equivalent--bequeathing a
thousand pounds to each of his children. Was I right in that? You do
not object"?

"Most assuredly not," answered Helen, though a little surprised at the
question. Still, she was so long accustomed to be consulted by the
earl, and to give her opinion frankly and freely on all points, that the
surprise was only momentary.

"And, by the way, I mean to leave the same sum--one thousand pounds
--to my cousin, Captain Bruce. Remember that, Helen; remember it
particularly, will you? In case any thing should happen before I have
time to add this to my will. But to the Menteiths. Your father thinks,
and I agree with him, that the money I design for them will be far
better spent now, or some portion of it, in helping these fatherless
children on in the world, than in keeping them waiting for my death,
which may not happen for years. What do you think?"

Helen agreed heartily. It would cause a certain diminution of yearly
income, but then the earl had far more than enough for his own wants,
and if not spent thus, the sum would certainly have been expended by him
some other form of benevolence. She said as much.

"Possibly it might. What