Mr. Cardross also; any prejudices he had from his knowledge of the late earl’s troubles with the Bruces were long ago dispersed.  And Helen was too innocent herself ever to have had a prejudice at all.  She said, when appealed to pointedly by the earl, as he now often appealed to her in many things, that she thought the scheme both pleasant and advisable.

“And now, papa,” added she, for her watchful eye detected Lord Cairnforth’s pale face and wearied air, “let us say good-night—­and good-by.”

Long after, they remembered, all of them, what an exceedingly quiet and ordinary good-by it was, none having the slightest feeling that it was more than a temporary parting.  The whole thing had been so sudden, and the day’s events appeared quite shadowy, and as if every body would wake up to-morrow morning to find them nothing but a dream.

Besides, there was a little hurrying and confusion consequent on the earl’s insisting on sending the Cardrosses home, for the dull, calm day had changed into the wildest of nights—­one of those sudden equinoctial storms, that in an hour or two alter the whole aspect of things this region.

“You must take the carriage, Helen—­you and your father; it is the last thing I can do for you—­and I would do every thing in the world for you if I could; but I shall, one day.  Good-by.  Take care of yourself, my dear.”

These were the earl’s farewell words to her.  She was so accustomed to his goodness and kindness that she never thought much about them till long afterward, when kindness was gone, and goodness seemed the merest delusion and dream.

When his friends had departed, Lord Cairnforth sat silent and melancholy.  His cousin good-naturedly tried to rouse him into the usual contest at chess with which they had begun to while away the long winter evenings, and which just suited Lord Cairnforth’s acute, accurate, and introspective brain, accustomed to plan and to order, so that he delighted in the game, and was soon as good a player as his teacher.  But now his mind was disturbed and restless; he sat by the fireside, listening to the fierce wind that went howling round and round the Castle, as the wind can howl along the sometimes placid shores of Loch Beg.

“I hope they have reached the Manse in safety.  Let me know, Malcolm, when the carriage returns.  I will go to bed then.  I wish they would have remained here; but the minister never will stay; he dislikes sleeping a single night from under his own roof.  Is he not a good man, cousin—­one of a thousand?”

“I have not the slightest doubt of it.”

“And his daughter—­have you in any way modified your opinion of her, which at first was not very favorable?”

“Not as to her beauty, certainly,” was the careless reply.  “She’s ’no bonnie,’ as you say in these parts—­terribly Scotch; but she is very good.  Only don’t you think good people are just a little wearisome sometimes?”