Are you able for this ?" "Oh yes, but--I can't--I can't!" and a sudden expression of trouble and fear darkened the widow's face.

"Do not ask me any questions about the past.

It is all over now; it seems like a dream-- as if I had never been away from Cairnforth." "Let it be so then, Helen, my dear," replied the earl, tenderly.
"Indeed, I never meant otherwise.

It is far the best." Thus, both at the time and ever after, he laid, and compelled others to lay, the seal of silence upon those two sad years, the secrets of which were buried in Captain Bruce's quiet grave in Grayfriars' church-yard.
"Helen," he continued, "I am not going to ask you a single question; I am only going to tell you a few things, which you are to tell your father at the first opportunity, so as to place you in a right position toward him, and whatever his health may be, to relieve his mind entirely both as to you and Boy." "Boy" the little Alexander had already begun to be called.

"Boy" par excellence, for even at that early period of his existence he gave tokens of being a most masculine character, with a resolute will of his own, and a power of howling till he got his will which delighted Nurse Campbell exceedingly.