But he felt as if every good and tender impulse of his nature were hardening into stone.
Hardened at the core Lord Cairnforth could never be; no man can whose heart has once admitted into its deepest sanctuary the love of One who, when all human loves fail, still whispers, "We will come in unto him, and make our abode with him"-- ay, be it the forlornest bodily tabernacle in which immortal soul ever dwelt.

But there came an outer crust of hardness over his nature which was years before it quite melted away.

Common observers might not perceive it--Mr.Cardross even did not; still it was there.
The thing was inevitable.

Right or wrong, deservedly or undeservedly, most of us have at different crises of our lives known this feeling-- the bitter sense of being wronged; of having opened one's heart to the sunshine, and had it all blighted and blackened with frost; of having laid one's self down in a passion of devotedness for beloved feet to walk upon, and been trampled upon, and beaten down to the dust.

And as months slipped by, and there came no Helen, this feeling, even against his will and his conscience, grew very much upon Lord Cairnforth.