his
daughter's absence; or else the inevitable necessity of things, which,
as we advance in years, becomes so strange and consoling an influence
over us, was working slowly upon the good old minister. He did not seem
heart-broken or even heart-wounded--he did his parish work with
unfailing diligence; but as, Sunday after Sunday, he passed from the
Manse garden through the kirk-yard, where, green and moss-covered now,
was the one white stone which bore the name of "Helen Lindsay, wife of
the Reverend Alexander Cardross," he was often seen to glance at it less
sorrowfully than smilingly. Year by year, the world and its cares were
lessening and slipping away from him, as they had long since slipped
from her who once shared them all. She now waited for him in that
eternal reunion which the marriage union teaches, as perhaps none other
can, to realize as a living fact and natural necessity.

But it was different with the earl. Sometimes, in an agony of
bitterness, he caught himself blaming her--Helen--whom her old
father never blamed; wondering how much she had found out of her
husband's conduct and character; speculating whether it was possible to
touch pitch and not be defiled; and whether the wife of Captain Bruce
had become in any way different from, and inferior to, innocent Helen
Cardross.

Lord Cairnforth had never answered her letter--he could not, without
being a complete hypocrite; and she had not written again. He did not
expect it--scarcely wished it--and yet the blank was sore. More
and more he withdrew from all but necessary associations, shutting
himself up in the Castle for weeks together--neither reading, nor
talking much to any one, but sitting quite still--he always sat quite
still--by the fireside in his little chair. He felt creeping over him
that deadness to external things which makes pain itself seem
comparatively almost sweet. Once he was heard to say, looking wistfully
at Mrs. Campbell, who had been telling him with many tears, of a "freend
o' hers" who had just died down at the clachan, "Nurse, I wish I could
greet like you."

The first thing which broke up in his heart this bitter, blighting frost
was, as so often happens, the sharp-edged blow of a new trouble.

He had not been at the Manse for two or three weeks, and had not even
heard of the family for several days, when, looking up from his seat in
church, he was startled by the apparition of an unfamiliar face in the
pulpit--a vol