Old Duncan's penetration had been correct--the difficult and painful London journey was all in vain.

Lord Cairnforth had returned home neither better nor worse than he was before; the experiment had failed.
Helen and her father guessed this from their first sight of him, though they had found him sitting as usual in his arm-chair at his favorite corner, and when they entered the library he had looked up with a smile -- the same old smile, as natural as though he had never been away.
"Is that you, Mr.Cardross?
Helen too?
How kind of you to come and see me so soon!" But, in spite of his cheerful greeting, they detected at once the expression of suffering in the poor face--"sae white and sae sma'," as Duncan had said; pale beyond its ordinary pallor, and shrunken and withered like an old man's; the more so, perhaps, as the masculine down had grown upon cheek and chin, and there was a matured manliness of expression in the whole countenance, which formed a strange contrast to the still puny and childish frame--alas! Not a whit less helpless or less distorted than before.

Yes, the experiment had failed.
They were so sure of this, Mr.Cardross and his daughter, that neither put to him a single question on the subject, but instinctively passed it over, and kept the conversation to all sorts of commonplace topics: the journey--the wonders of London--and the small events which had happened in quiet Cairnforth during the three months that the earl had been away.
Lord Cairnforth was the first to end their difficulty and hesitation by openly referring to that which neither of his friends could bear to speak of.
"Yes," he said, at last, with a faint, sad smile, "I agree with old Duncan--I never mean to go to London any more.

I shall stay for the rest of my days among my own people." "So much the better for them," observed the minister, warmly.
"Do you think that?
Well, we shall see.

I must try and make it so, as well as I can.