“Joanna and the governess?” said Katie.
“And mair than them,” answered the Mistress. “A lad that I would take to be the son that’s been so long away. An antic with a muckle cloak, and a black beard, and a’ the looks of a French fiddler; but Joanna called him by his name, so he bid to be her brother; and either he’s deluding the other bit lassie, or she’s ensnaring him.”
Katie smiled, so faintly and unlike herself, that it was not difficult to perceive how little her heart was open to amusement. The Mistress, however, who apprehended every thing after her own fashion, took even this faint expression of mirth a little amiss.
“You needna laugh—there’s little laughing matter in it,” said the Mistress. “If a bairn of mine were to be led away after ony such fashion, do ye think I could find in my heart to smile? Na, they’re nae friends of mine, the present family of Melmar; but I canna see a son of a decent house maybe beguiled by an artfu’ foreign woman, however great an antic he may be himself, and take ony pleasure in it. It’s aye sure to be a grief to them he belongs to, and maybe a destruction to the lad a’ his life.”
“But Desirée is only sixteen, and Oswald Huntley, if it was Oswald—is a very great deal older—he should be able to take care of himself,” said Katie, repeating the offense. “You saw her, then? Do you think she was like the lady you knew?”
“I never said I knew any lady,” said the Mistress, testily. “I kent of one that was lost mony a year ago. Na, na, this is naebody belonging to her. She was a fair, soft woman that, with blue e’en, and taller than me; but this is a bit elf of a thing, dark and little. I canna tell what put it into my head for a moment, for Melmar was the last house in the world to look for a bairn’s of hers in; but folk canna help nonsense thoughts. Cosmo, you see, he’s a very fanciful laddie, as indeed is no’ to be wondered at, and he wrote me hame word about somebody he had seen—and then hearing of this bairn asking questions about me; but it was just havers, as I kent from the first—she is no more like her than she’s like you or me. But I’m sorry about the lad. Naething but ill and mischief can come of the like, so far as I’ve seen. If he’s deluding the bairn, he’s a villain, Katie, and if she’s leading him on—and ane can never tell what snares are in these Frenchwomen from their very cradle—I’m sorry for Melmar and his wife, though they’re no friends to me.”
“I think Oswald Huntley ought to be very well able to take care of himself,” repeated Katie—“and to know French ways, too. I like Desirée, and I don’t like him. I hope she will not have any thing to say to him. When is Cosmo coming home?”
The Mistress, however, looked a little troubled about Cosmo. She did not answer readily.
“He’s a fanciful bairn,” she said, half fondly, half angrily—“as indeed what else can you expect? He’s ane of the real auld Livingstones of Norlaw—aye some grand wild plan in his head for other folks, and no’ that care for himself that might be meet. He would have been a knight like what used to be in the ballads in my young days, if he hadna lived ower late for that.”
Pausing here, the Mistress closed her lips with a certain emphatic movement, as though she had nothing more to say upon this subject, and was about proceeding to some other, when they were both startled by the noisy opening of a door, which Katie knew to be the study. The sound was that of some feeble hand, vainly attempting to turn the handle, and shaking the whole door with the effort which was at last successful; then came a strange, incoherent, half-pronounced “Katie!” Katie flew to the door, with a face like death itself. The Mistress rose and waited, breathless, yet too conscious of her own impatience of intrusion to follow. Then a heavy, slow fall, as of some one whose limbs failed under him, a cry from Katie, and the sudden terrified scream of one of the maids from the kitchen moved the Mistress beyond all thoughts but those of help. She ran into the little hall of the manse, throwing her cloak off her shoulders with an involuntary promise that she could not leave this house to-day. There she saw a melancholy sight, the minister, with a gray ashen paleness upon his face, lying on the threshold of his study, not insensible, but powerless, moving with a dreadful impotence those poor, pale, trembling lips, from which no sound would come. Katie knelt beside him, supporting his head, almost as pallid as he, aggravating, unawares, the conscious agony of his helplessness by anxious, tender questions, imploring him to speak to her—while the maid stood behind, wringing her hands, crying, and asking whether she should bring water? whether she should get some wine? what she should do?