Cardross obeyed.  The two friends looked after him as he walked down the room with his light, active step, and graceful, gentlemanly figure—­a youth who seemed born to be heir to all the splendors around him.  Helen clasped her hands tightly together on her lap, and her lips moved.  She did not speak, but the earl almost seemed to hear the great outcry of the mother’s heart going up to God—­“Give any thing thou wilt to me, only give him all!” Alas!  That such a cry should ever fall back to earth in the other pitiful moan, “Would God that I had died for thee, O Abaslom, my son—­my son!”

But it was not to be so with Helen Bruce.  Her son was no Absalom.  Her days of sorrow were ended.

Laird Cairnforth saw how violently affected she was, and began to talk to her in a commonplace and practical manner about all that he and Cardross had been arranging that morning.

“And I must say that, though he will never shine at college, and probably his grandfather would mourn over him as having no learning, there is an amount of solid sense about the fellow with which I am quite delighted.  He is companionable too—­knows how to make use of his acquirements.  Whatever light he possesses, he will never hide it under a bushel, which is, perhaps, the best qualification for the position that he will one day hold.  I have no fear about Cardross.  He will be an heir after my own heart—­will accomplish all I wished, and possibly a little more.”

Mrs. Bruce answered only by tears.

“But there is one thing which he and I have settled between us, subject to your approval, of course.  He must go back to college immediately.”

“To Edinburg?”

“Do not look so alarmed, Helen.  No, not Edinburg.  It is best to break off all associations there—­he wishes it himself.  He would like to go to a new University—­St. Andrew’s.”

“But he knows nobody there.  He would be quite alone.  For I can not—­ do you not see I can not?—­leave my father.  Oh, it is like being pulled in two,” cried Mrs. Bruce, in great distress.

“Be patient, Helen, and hear.  We have arranged it all, the boy and I. Next week we are both bound for St. Andrew’s.”

“You?”

“You think I shall be useless?  That it is a man, and not such a creature as I, who ought to take charge of your boy?”

The earl spoke with that deep bitterness which sometimes, though very, very rarely, he betrayed, till he saw what exceeding pain he had given.

“Forgive me, Helen; I know you did not mean that; but it was what I myself often thought until this morning.  Now I see that after all I—­ even I—­may be the very best person to go with the boy, because, while keeping a safe watch over him, and a cheerful house always open to him, I shall also give him somebody to take care of.  I shall be as much charge to him almost as a woman, and it will be good for him.  Do you not perceive this?”