ridge and milk--
wives, and weans, and all--than see them like these foreigners,
counts, barons, and princes though they be. Father, I hate them all.
And I mind always the way I was brought up, and that I was once a
minister's daughter in dear and bonnie Cairnforth."

"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.