r alone.

But Lord Cairnforth had learned this to the full. Otherwise, as he sat
in the Manse parlor, listening patiently to Helen's father, and in the
newness and suddenness of her loss, and the strong delusion of his own
fond fancy, imagining every minute he heard her step on the stair and
her voice in the hall, he must have utterly broken down.

He did not do so. He maintained his righteous concealment, his noble
deceit--to the very last; spending the whole evening with Mr.
Cardross, and quitting him without having betrayed a word of what he
dreaded--what he was almost sure of.

Though the marriage might be, and no doubt was, a perfectly legal and
creditable marriage in the eye of the world, still, in the eyes of
honest men, it would be deemed altogether unworthy and unfortunate, and
he knew the minister would think it so. How could he tell the poor old
father, who had so generously given up his only daughter for the one
simple reason--sufficient reason for any righteous marriage--
"Helen loved him," that his new son-in-law was proved by proof
irresistible to be a deliberate liar, a selfish, scheming, mercenary
knave?

So, under this heavy responsibility, Lord Cairnforth decided to do what,
in minor matters, he had often noticed Helen do toward her gentle and
easily-wounded father--to lay upon him no burdens greater than he
could bear, but to bear them herself for him. And in this instance the
earl's only means of so doing, for the present at least, was by taking
refuge in that last haven of wounded love and cruel suffering--
silence.

The earl determined to maintain a silence unbroken as the grave
regarding all the past, and his own relations with Captain Bruce--
that is, until he saw the necessity for doing otherwise.

One thing, however, smote his heart with a sore pang, which, after a
week or so, he could not entirely conceal from Mr. Cardross. Had Helen
left him--him, her friend from childhood--no message, no letter?
Had her happy love so completely blotted out old ties that she could go
away without one word of farewell to him?

The minister thought not. He was sure she had written; she had said she
should, the night before her marriage, and he had heard her moving about
in her room, and even sobbing, he fancied, long after the house was gone
to rest. Nay, he felt sure he had seen her on her wedding morning give
a letter to Captain Bruce, saying "it was to be posted to Edinburg."

"Where, you k