The tears sprang to the young earl's eyes. "Don't speak to me," he
whispered; "it is all over now; but it was very hard for a time."

"I know it."

"Yes--at least as much as you can know."

Helen was silent. She recognized, as she had never recognized before,
the awful individuality of suffering which it had pleased God to lay
upon this one human being--suffering at which even the friends who
loved him best could only stand aloof and gaze, without the possibility
of alleviation.

"Ay," he said, at last, "it is all over: I need try no more experiments.
I shall just sit still and be content."

What was the minute history of the experiments he had tried, how much
bodily pain they had cost him, and through how much mental pain he had
struggled before he attained that "content," he did not explain even to
Helen. He turned the conversation to the books which Mr. Cardross was
cutting, and many other books, of which he had bought a whole cart-load
for the minister's library. Neither then, nor at any other time, did he
ever refer, except in the most cursory way, to his journey to London.

But Helen noticed that for a long while--weeks, nay, months, he
seemed to avoid more than ever any conversation about himself. He was
slightly irritable and uncertain of mood, and disposed to shut himself
up in the Castle, reading, or seeming to read, from morning till night.
It was not till a passing illness of the minister's in some degree