No one had ever hinted that the lad was like his father.
He was not.

Nature seemed mercifully to have forgotten to perpetuate that type of character which had given Mr.Menteith formerly, and others since, such a justifiable dread of the Bruce family, and such a righteous determination to escape them.

Lord Cairnforth still paid the annuity, but on condition that no one of his father's kindred should ever interfere, in the smallest degree, with Helen's child.
This done, both he and she trusted to the strong safeguards of habit and education, and all other influences which so strongly modify character, to make the boy all that they desired him to be, and to counteract those tendencies which, as Lord Cairnforth plainly perceived, were Helen's daily dread.

It was a struggle, mysterious as that which visible human free-will is forever opposing (apparently) to invisible fate, the end of which it is impossible to see, and yet we struggle on.
Thus laboring together with one hope, one aim, and one affection, all centered in this boy, Lord Cairnforth and Mrs.Bruce passed many a placid year.

And when the mother's courage failed her--when her heart shrank in apprehension from real terrors or from chimeras of her own creating, her friend taught her to fold patiently her trembling hands, and say, as she herself and the minister had first taught him in his forlorn boyhood, the one only prayer which calms fear and comforts sorrow--the lesson of the earl's whole life--"Thy will be done!".