And afterward, during the four weeks that Lady Cairnforth survived her husband, he was the only person, beyond her necessary attendants, who saw her until she died.
The day after her death he was suddenly summoned to the castle by Mr.
Menteith, an Edinburg writer to the signet, and confidential agent, or factor, as the office called in Scotland, to the late earl.
"They'll be sending for you to baptize the child.

It's early--but the pair bit thing may be delicate, and they may want it done at once, before Mr.Menteith returns to Edinburg." "Maybe so, Helen; so do not expect me back till you see me." Thus saying, the minister quitted his sunshiny manse garden, where he was working peacefully among his raspberry-bushes, with his wife looking on, and walked, in meditative mood, through the Cairnforth woods, now blue with hyacinths in their bosky shadows, and in every nook and corner starred with great clusters of yellow primroses, which in this part of the country grow profusely, even down to within a few feet of high-water mark, on the tidal shores of the lochs.

Their large, round, smiling faces, so irresistibly suggestive of baby smiles at sight of them, and baby fingers clutching at them, touched the heart of the good minister, who had left two small creatures of his own--a "bit girlie" of five, and a two-year-old boy--playing on his grass-plot at home with some toys of the countess's giving: she had always been exceedingly kind to the Manse children.
He thought of her, lying dead; and then of her poor little motherless and fatherless baby, whom, if she had any consciousness in her death-hour, it must have been a sore pang to her to leave behind.

And the tears gathered again and again in the good man's eyes, shutting out from his vision all the beauty of the spring.
He reached the grand Italian portico, built by some former earl with a taste for that style, and yet harmonizing well with the smooth lawn, bounded by a circle of magnificent trees, through which came glimpses of the glittering loch.

The great doors used almost always to stand open, and the windows were rarely closed--the countess like sunshine and fresh air, but now all was shut up and silent, and not a soul was to be seen about the place.
Mr.Cardross sighed, and walked round to the other side of the castle, where was my lady's flower-garden, or what was to be made into one.
Then he entered by French windows, from a terrace overlooking it, my lord's library, also incomplete.