"It's surely frae Miss Helen--Mrs. Bruce, that is," said Malcolm, lifting it. "But folk in love are less mindfu' than ordinar. She's directed it to Charlotte Square, Edinburg, and then carried it up to London wi' hersel', and some other body, the captain, I think, has redirected it to Cairnforth Castle." "No remarks, Malcolm," interrupted the earl, with unwonted sharpness. "Break the seal and lay the letter so that I can read it. Then you may go." Bur, when his servant had gone, he closed his eyes in utter hopelessness of dejection, for he saw how completely Helen had been deceived. Her letter ran thus--her poor, innocent letter--dated ever so long ago--indeed, the time when she had told her father she should write --the night before her marriage-day: "MY DEAR FRIEND,--I am very busy, but have striven hard to find an hour in which to write to you, for I do not think people forget their friends because they have gotten other people to be mindful of too. I think a good and happy love only makes other loves feel closer and dearer. I am sure I have been greeting (Old English: weeping) like a bairn, twenty times a day, ever since I knew I was to be married, whenever I called to mind you and my dear father. You will be very good to him while I am away? But I need not ask you that. Six months, he says--I mean Captain Bruce--will, according to the Edinburg doctor's advice, set up his health entirely, if he travels about in a warm climate; and, therefore, by June, your birthday, we are sure to be back in dear old Cairnforth, to live there for the rest of our days, for he declares he likes no other place half so well. "I am right to go with him for these six months--am I not? But I need not ask; you sent me word so yourself. He had nobody to take care of him--nobody in the world but me. His sisters are gay, lively girls, he says, and he has been so long abroad that they are almost strangers. He tells me I might as well send him away to die at once, unless I went with him as his wife. So I go. "I hope he will come home quite strong and well, and able to begin building our cottage on that wee bit of ground on the hill-side above Cairnforth which you have promised to give to him. I am inexpressibly happy about it. We shall all live so cheerily together--and meet every day--the Castle, the Manse, and the Cottage. When I think of that, and of my coming back, I am almost comforted for this sad going away--leaving my dear father, and the boys, and you.