"Still, could not my fortune be settled upon herself as a life-rent, to descend intact to her heirs--that is, her children ?" "My dear lord, how you must have thought over every thing!" "You forget, my friend, I have nothing to do but to sit thinking." There was a sad intonation in the voice which affected Mr.Menteith deeply.

He made no remark, but busied himself in drawing up the will, which Lord Cairnforth seemed nervously anxious should be completed that very day.
"For, suppose any thing should happen--if I died this night, for instance! No, let what is done be done as soon as possible, and as privately." "You wish, then, the matter to be kept private ?" asked Mr.Menteith.
"Yes." So in the course of the next few hours the will was drawn up.

It was somewhat voluminous with sundry small legacies, no one being forgotten whom the earl desired to benefit or thought needed his help; but the bulk of his fortune he left unreservedly to Helen Cardross.

Malcolm and another servant were called in as witnesses, and the earl saying to them with a cheerful smile "that he was making his will, but did not mean to die a day the sooner," signed it with that feeble, uncertain signature which yet had cost him years of pains to acquire, and never might have been acquired at all but for his own perseverance and the unwearied patience of Helen Cardross.
"She taught me to write, you know," said he to Mr.Menteith, as--the witnesses being gone--he, with a half-amused look, regarded his own autograph.
"You have used the results of her teaching well on her behalf today.

It is no trifle--a clear income of ten thousand a year; but she will make a good use of it." "I am sure of that.