No one could say--ought to say to a wife, "Your husband is a scoundrel." And besides, (to this hope Lord Cairnforth clung with a desperation heroic as bitter), Captain Bruce might not be an irredeemable scoundrel; and he might--there was still a chance--have married Helen not altogether from interested motives.

She was so lovable that he might have loved her, or have grown to love her, even though he had slighted her at first.
"He must have loved her--he could not help it," groaned the earl, inwardly, when the minister and others stabbed him from time to time with little episodes of the courting days--the captain's devotedness to Helen, and Helen's surprised, fond delight at being so much "made of" by the first lover who had ever wooed her, and a lover whom externally any girl would have been proud of.

And then the agonized cry of another faithful heart went up to heaven--"God grant he may love her; that she may be happy--anyhow--any where!" But all this while, with the almost morbid prevision of his character, Lord Cairnforth took every precaution that Helen should be guarded, as much as was possible, in case there should befall her that terrible calamity, the worst that can happen to a woman--of being compelled to treat the husband and father, the natural protector, helper, and guide of herself and her children, as not only her own, but their natural enemy.
The earl did not cancel Helen's name from his will; he let every thing stand as before her marriage; but he took the most sedulous care to secure her fortune unalienably to herself and her offspring.

This, because, if Captain Bruce were honest, such precaution could not affect him in the least: man and wife are one flesh--settlements were a mere form, which love would only smile at, and at which any honorable man must be rather glad of than otherwise.

But if her husband were dishonorable, Helen was made safe, so far as worldly matters went-- safe, except for the grief from which, alas! no human friend can protect another--a broken heart! Was her heart broken or breaking?
The earl could not tell nor even guess.