Awe-struck, the earl sat and watched the young man (for he could not be thirty yet), struck down thus in the prime of his days—carried away into the other world—while he himself, with his frail, flickering taper of a life, remained. Wherefore? At length, in a whisper, he called "Helen!" and she came and knelt beside the earl's chair.
"He is fast going," said she.
"I see that."
"In an hour or two, the doctor said."
"Then I will stay, if I may?"
"Oh yes."
Helen said it quite passively; indeed, her whole appearance as she moved about the room, and then took her seat by her husband's side, indicated one who makes no effort either to express or to restrain grief—who has, in truth, suffered till she can suffer no more.
The dying man was not so near death as the doctor had thought, for after a little he fell into what seemed a natural sleep. Helen leant her head against the wall and closed her eyes. But that instant was heard from the inner room a cry, the like of which Lord Cairnforth had never heard before—the sharp, waking cry of a very young infant.
In a moment Helen started up—her whole expression changed; and when, after a short disappearance, she re-entered the room with her child, who had dropped contentedly asleep again, nestling to her bosom, she was perfectly transformed. No longer the plain, almost elderly woman; she had in her poor worn face the look—which makes any face young, nay, lovely—the mother's look. Fate had not been altogether cruel to her; it had given her a child.
"Isn't he a bonnie bairn?" she whispered, as once again she knelt down by Lord Cairnforth's chair, and brought the little face down so that he could see it and touch it. He did touch it with his feeble fingers— the small soft cheek—the first baby-cheek he had ever beheld.