Go, my boy, and don't hurry back.
I want to have a good long talk with your mother." Cardross obeyed.

The two friends looked after him as he walked down the room with his light, active step, and graceful, gentlemanly figure--a youth who seemed born to be heir to all the splendors around him.

Helen clasped her hands tightly together on her lap, and her lips moved.

She did not speak, but the earl almost seemed to hear the great outcry of the mother's heart going up to God--"Give any thing thou wilt to me, only give him all!" Alas! That such a cry should ever fall back to earth in the other pitiful moan, "Would God that I had died for thee, O Abaslom, my son--my son!" But it was not to be so with Helen Bruce.

Her son was no Absalom.