ose possible.

Still, she had loved him--she must have done so--with that strange,
sudden idealization of love which sometimes seizes upon a woman who has
reached--more than reached--mature womanhood, and never
experienced the passion. And she had married him, and gone away with
him--left, for his sake, father, brothers, friends--her one
special friend, who was now nothing to her--nothing!

Whatever emotions the earl felt--and it would be almost sacrilegious
to intrude upon them, or to venture on any idle speculation concerning
them--one thing was clear; in losing Helen, the light of his eyes,
the delight of his life was gone.

He sat in his chair quite still, as indeed he always was, but now it was
a deathlike quietness, without the least sign of the wonderful mobility
of feature and cheerfulness of voice and manner which made people so
soon grow used to his infirmity--sat until his room was prepared.
Then he suffered himself to be carried to his bed, which, for the first
time in his life, he refused to leave for several days.

Not that he was ill--he declined any medical help, and declared that
he was only "weary, weary"--at which, after his long journey, no one
was surprised. He refused to see any body, even Mr. Cardross, and would
suffer no one beside him but his old nurse, Mrs. Campbell, whom he
seemed to cling to as when he was a little child. For hours she sat by
his bed, watching him, but scarcely speaking a word; and for hours he
lay, his eyes wide open, but with that blank expression in them which
Mrs. Campbell had first noticed when he sat by the housekeeper's fire.

"My bairn! My bairn!" was all she said--for she loved him. And,
somehow, her love comforted him. "Ye maun live, ye maun live. Maybe
they'll need ye yet," sobbed she, without explaining--perhaps without
knowing--who "they" meant. But she knew enough of her "bairn" to
know that if any thing would rouse him it was the thought of other folk.

"Do you think so, nurse? Do you think I can be of any good to any
creature in this world?"

"Ay, ye can, ye can, my lord--ye'd be awfully missed gin ye were to
dee."

"Then I'll no dee"--faintly smiling, and using the familiar speech of
his childhood. "Call Malcolm. I'll try to rise. And, nurse, if you
would have the carriage ordered--the pony carriage--I will drive
down to the Manse and see how Mr. Cardross is. He must be rather dull
without his daughter."

The earl did not--and it was l