blighted in her all wifely
emotions--even wifely regrets. She was grave, sad, silent, for many
months during her early term of widowhood, but she made no pretense of
extravagant sorrow, and, except under the rarest and most necessary
circumstances, she never even named her husband. Nothing did she betray
about him, or her personal relations with him, even to her nearest and
dearest friends. He had passed away, leaving no more enduring memory
than the tomb-stone which Lord Cairnforth had erected in Grayfriars'
church-yard.

---Except his child, of whom it was the mother's undisguised delight
that, outwardly and inwardly, the little fellow appeared to be wholly a
Cardross. With his relatives on the father's side, after the one formal
letter which she had requested should be written to Colonel Bruce
announcing Captain Bruce's death, Helen evidently wished to keep up no
acquaintance whatever--nay, more than wished; she was determined it
should be so--with that quiet, resolute determination which was
sometimes seen in every feature of her strong Scotch face, once so
girlish, but it bore tokens of what she had gone through--of a battle
from which no woman ever comes out unwounded or unscarred.

But, as before said, she was a mother, and wholly a mother, which
blessed fact healed the young widow's heart better and sooner than any
thing else could have done. Besides, in her case, there was no
suspense, no conflict of duties--all her duties were done. Had they
lasted after her child's birth the struggle might have been too hard;
for mothers have responsibilities as well as wives, and when these
conflict, as they do sometimes, God help her who has to choose between
them! But Helen was saved this misfortune. Providence had taken her
destiny out of her own hands, and here she was, free as Helen Cardross
of old, in exactly the same position, and going through the same simple
round of daily cares and daily avocations which she had done as the
minister's active and helpful daughter.

For as nothing else but the minister's daughter would she, for the
present, be recognized at Cairnforth. Lord Cairnforth's intentions
toward herself or her son she insisted on keeping wholly secret, except,
of course, as regarded that dear and good father.

"I may die," she said to the earl--"die before yourself; and if my
boy grows up, you may not love him, or he may not deserve your love, in
which case you must choose another heir. No, you