“A nasty, snuffy, disagreeable man!” cried Joanna, with enthusiasm. “I am sure I would never enter the church again if he was there; but it’s very cruel and hard-hearted, and just like papa, to speak of him. Dr. Logan is only ill. I would break my heart if I thought he was going to die.”
“Gordon would be a very useful man to us,” said Melmar—“a great deal more so than Logan ever was. I mean to write and ask him here, now that his time’s coming. Be quiet, Joan, and let’s have no more nonsense. I’ll tell Auntie Jean. If you play your cards well, you might have a good chance of him yourself, you monkey, and with Aunt Jean’s fortune to furnish the manse, you might do worse. Ha! ha! I wonder what Patricia would say?”
“Patricia would say it was quite good enough for Joanna,” said that amiable young lady. “A poor Scotch minister! I am thankful I never had such low tastes. Nobody would speak of such a thing to me.”
“Don’t quarrel about the new man till the old man is dead, at least,” said Oswald, laughing. “Mademoiselle Desirée quite agrees with me, I know. She is shocked to hear all this. Is it not so?”
“I thought of his daughter,” said Desirée, who was very much shocked, and had tears in her eyes. “She will be an orphan now.”
“And Desirée was very fond of Katie,” said Joanna, looking half jealously, half fondly at the little governess, “and so am I too; and she has all the little ones to take care of. Oh, papa, I’ll never believe that Dr. Logan is going to die.”
“Fhat is all this, Joan? tell me,” cried Aunt Jean, who had already shown signs of curiosity and impatience. This was the signal for breaking up the party. When Joanna put her lips close to the old woman’s ear, and began to shout the required information, the others dispersed rapidly. Desirée went to her room to get her cloak and bonnet. It was her hour for walking with her pupil, and that walk was now an enchanted progress, a fairy road, leading ever further and further into her fairy land. As for Oswald, he stood in the window, looking out and shrugging his shoulders at the cold. His blood was not warm enough to bear the chill of the northern wind; the sight of the frost-bound paths and whitened branches made him shiver before he went out. He meant to attend the girls in their walk, in spite of his shiver; but the frosty path by the side of Tyne was not a fairy road to him.
Joanna had left them on some erratic expedition among the trees; they were alone together, Desirée walking by Oswald’s side, very quiet and silent, with her eyes cast down, and a tremor at her heart. The poor little girl did not expect any thing particular, for they were often enough together thus—still she became silent in spite of herself, as she wandered on in her dream by Oswald’s side, and, in spite of herself, cast down her eyes, and felt the color wavering on her cheek. Perhaps he saw it and was pleased—he liked such moments well enough. They had all the amusing, tantalizing, dramatic pleasure of moments which might be turned to admirable account, but never were so—moments full of expectation and possibility, of which nothing ever came.
At this particular moment Oswald was, as it happened, very tenderly gracious to Desirée. He was asking about her family, or rather her mother, whom, it appeared, he had heard of without hearing of any other relative, and Desirée, in answering, spoke of Marie—who was Marie? “Did I never, then, tell you of my sister?” said Desirée with a blush and smile.
“Your sister?—I was not aware—” stammered Oswald—and he looked at her so closely and coldly, and with such a scrutinizing air of suspicion, that Desirée stared at him, in return, with amazement and half-terror—“Perhaps Mademoiselle Desirée has brothers also,” he said, in the same tone, still looking at her keenly. What if she had brothers? Would it have been wrong?