"Boy" the little Alexander had already begun to be called. "Boy" par excellence, for even at that early period of his existence he gave tokens of being a most masculine character, with a resolute will of his own, and a power of howling till he got his will which delighted Nurse Campbell exceedingly. He was already a thorough Cardross—not in the least a Bruce; he inherited Helen's great blue eyes, large frame, and healthy temperament, and was, in short, that repetition of the mother in the son which Dame Nature delights in, and out of which she sometimes makes the finest and noblest men that the world ever sees.
"Boy has been wide awake these two hours, noticing every thing," said his mother, with a mother's firm conviction that this rather imaginative fact was the most interesting possible to every body. "He might have known the loch quite well already, by the way he kept staring at it."
"He will know it well enough by-and by," said the earl, smiling. "You are aware, Helen, that he and you are permanently coming home."
"To the Manse? yes! My dear father! he will keep us there during his life time. Afterward we must take our chance, my boy and I."
"Not quite that. Are you not aware—I thought, from circumstances, you must have guessed it long ago—that Cairnforth Castle, and my whole property, will be yours sometime?"
"I will tell you no untruth, Lord Cairnforth. I was aware of it. That is, he—I mean it was suspected that you had meant it once. I found this out—don't ask me how—shortly after I was married; and I determined, as the only chance of avoiding it—and several other things—never to write to you again; never to take the least means of bringing myself—us—back to your memory."
"Why so?"
"I wished you to forget us, and all connected with us, and to choose some one more worthy, more suitable, to inherit your property."
"But, Helen, that choice rested with myself alone," said the earl, smiling. "Has not a man the right to do what he likes with his own?"
"Yes, but—oh," cried Helen, earnestly, "do not talk of this. It caused me such misery once. Never let us speak of it again."