“It’s his father’s way he has, ye ken,” Malcolm would say—­Malcolm, who, after a season of passing jealousy, had for years succumbed wholly to his admiration of “Miss Helen’s bairn.”  “But it’s the only bit o’ the Bruces that the lad’s gotten in him, thank the Lord!”

Though the earl did not say openly “thank the Lord,” still he, too, recognized with a solemn joy that the qualities he and Helen dreaded had either not been inherited by Captain Bruce’s son, or else timely care had rooted them out.  And as he gradually relaxed his watch over the young man, and left him more and more to his own guidance, Lord Cairnforth, sitting alone in his house at St. Andrew’s—­almost as much alone as he used to sit in the Castle library—­would think, with a strange consolation, that this year’s heavy sacrifice had not been in vain.

Once Cardross, coming in from a long golfing match, broke upon one of these meditative fits, and was a little surprised to find that the earl did not rouse himself out of it quite so readily as was his wont; also that the endless college stories, which he always liked so much to listen to, fell rather blank, and did not meet Lord Cairnforth’s hearty laugh, as gay as that of a young fellow could share and sympathize in them all.

“You are not well to-day,” suddenly said the lad.  “What have you been doing?”

“My usual work—­nothing.”

“But you have been thinking.  What about?” cried Cardross, with the affectionate persistency of one who knew himself a favorite, and looking up in the earl’s face with his bright, fond eyes—­Helen’s very eyes.

“I was thinking of your mother, my boy.  You know it is a whole year since I have seen your mother.”

“So she said in her last letter, and wondered when you intended coming home, because she misses you more and more every day.”

“You, she means, Carr.”

“No, yourself.  I know my mother wishes you would come home.”

“Does she?  And so do I. But I should have to leave you alone, my boy; for if once I make the effort, and return to Cairnforth, I know I shall never quit it more.”

He spoke earnestly—­more so than the occasion seemed to need, and there was a weary look in his eyes which struck his companion.

“Are you afraid to leave me alone, Lord Cairnforth?” asked Cardross, sadly.

“No.”  And again, as if he had not answered strongly enough, he repeated, “My dear boy, no!”

“Thank you.  You never said it, but I knew.  You came here for my sake, to take charge of me.  You made me happy—­you never blamed me—­you neither watched me or domineered over me—­still, I knew.  Oh, how good you have been!”

Lord Cairnforth did not speak for some time, and then he said, gravely,

“However things were at first, you must feel, my boy, that I trust you now entirely, and that you and I are thorough friends—­equal friends.”