Meanwhile, the marriage was accomplished. All that Helen's fondest friend could do was to sit and watch the event of things, as the earl determined to watch--silently, but with a vigilance that never slept. Not passively neither. He took immediate steps, by means which his large fortune and now wide connection easily enable him to employ, to find out exactly the position of Helen's husband, both his present circumstances, and, so far as was possible, his antecedents, at home or abroad. For after the discovery of so many atrocious, deliberate lies, every fact that Captain Bruce had stated concerning himself remained open to doubt. However, the lies were apparently that sort of falsehood which springs from a brilliant imagination, a lax conscience, and a ready tongue-- prone to say whatever comes easiest and upper most. Also, because probably following the not uncommon Jesuitical doctrine that the end justifies the means, he had, for whatever reason he best knew, determined to marry Helen Cardross, and took his own measures accordingly. The main facts of his self-told history turned out to be correct. He was certainly the identical Ernest Henry Bruce, only surviving son of Colonel Bruce, and had undoubtedly been in India, a captain in the Company's service. His medals were veritable--won by creditable bravery. No absolute moral turpitude could be discovered concerning him --only a careless, reckless life; and utter indifference to debt; and a convenient readiness to live upon other people's money rather than his own--qualities not so rare, or so sharply judged in the world at large, as they were likely to be by the little world of innocent, honest Cairnforth. And yet he was young--he had married a good wife--he might mend. At present, plain and indisputable, his character stood-- good-natured, kindly--perhaps not even unlovable--but destitute of the very foundations of all that constitutes worth in a man--or woman either--truthfulness, independence, honor, honesty. And he was Helen's husband--Helen, the true and the good; the poor minister's daughter, who had been brought up to think that it was better to starve upon porridge and salt than to owe any one a halfpenny! What sort of a marriage could it possibly turn out to be? To this question, which Lord Cairnforth asked himself continually, in an agony of doubt, no answer came--no clue whatsoever, though, from even the first week, Helen's letters reached the Manse as regularly as clock work. But they were merely outside letters--very sweet and loving --telling her father every thing that could interest him about foreign places, persons, and things; only of herself and her own feelings saying almost nothing. It was unlikely she should: the earl laid this comfort to his soul twenty times a day. She was married now; she could not be expected to be frank as in her girlhood; still, this total silence, so unnatural to her candid disposition, alarmed him.