er proud of my young fellow. He may not be very clever
--the minister says he is not--but he is what I call a man. Like
his mother, who never was clever, but yet was every inch a woman--the
best woman, in all relations of life, that I ever knew."

Helen smiled too--a little sadly, perhaps--but soon her mind
recurred from all other things to her one prominent thought.

"And what would you do with the boy himself? He knows nothing of money
--has never had a pound-note in his pocket all his life."

"Then it is high time he should have--and a good many of them. I
shall pay Mrs. Menteith well for his board, but I shall make him a
sufficient allowance besides. He must stand on his own feet, without
any one to support him. It is the only way to make a boy into a man--
a man that is worth anything. Do you not see that yourself?"

"I see, Lord Cairnforth, that you think it would be best for my boy to
be separated from his mother."

She spoke in a hurt tone, and yet with a painful consciousness that what
she said was not far off the truth, more especially as the earl did not
absolutely deny the accusation.

"I think, my dear Helen, that it would be better if he were separated
from us all for a time. We are such quiet, old-fashioned folks at
Cairnforth, he may come to weary of us, you know. But my strongest
motive is exactly what I stated--that he should be left to himself,
to feel his own strength and the strength of those principles which we
have tried to give him--that any special character he possesses may
have free space to develop itself. Up to a certain point we can take
care of our children; beyond, we can not--nay, we ought not; they
must take care of themselves. I believe--do not be angry, Helen--
but I believe there comes a time in every boy's life when the wisest
thing even his mother can do for him is--to leave him alone."

"And not watch over him--not to guide him?"

"Yes, but not so as to vex him by the watching and the guiding.
However, we will talk of this another day. Here the lad comes."

And the earl's eyes brightened almost as much as Helen's did when
Cardross leaped in at the window, all his good-humor restored, kissed
his mother in his rough, fond way, of which he was not in the least
ashamed as yet, and sat down by the wheeled chair with that tender
respectfulness and involuntary softening of manner and tone which he
never failed to show Lord Cairnforth, and had never shown so much to a