“Does Mademoiselle Marie know?”
And once more he glanced round the room, and at her vacant sofa, with a tender reverence and respect which touched Cosmo to the heart, and filled the lad with understanding at once and pity. Could he suppose that it was hearing of this that aggravated Marie’s headache? could he delude himself with the thought that she was moved by the prospect of his departure? Poor Cameron! Madame Roche was looking at him too with a strange anxiety, trying to read his softened and eloquent face. The old lady paused with an embarrassed and hesitating perplexity, looking from Cosmo to Cameron, from Cameron back again to Cosmo. The lad thought she asked an explanation from him with her eyes, but Cosmo had no explanation to give.
“My friend,” said Madame Roche, at last, trying to recover her smile, but speaking with an evident distress which she endeavored in vain to conceal—“you must not say Mademoiselle Marie. The people do so, for they have known her as a girl; but they all know her story, poor child! I fancied you must have heard it from Baptiste or Margot, who love to talk. Ah! have they been so prudent?—it is strange.”
Madame Roche paused again, as if to take breath. Cosmo instinctively and silently moved his chair further away, and only looked on, a deeply-moved spectator, not an actor in the scene. Cameron did not say a word, but he grasped the little marble table with a hand as cold as itself, and looked at Madame Roche with the face of a man whose tongue clove to his mouth, and who could not have spoken for his life. She, trembling a little, afraid to show her emotion, half frightened at the look of the person she addressed, proceeded, after her pause, with a rapid, interrupted voice.
“My poor, tender Marie—poor child!” said the mother. “Alas! she is no more mademoiselle—she is married; she was married years ago, when she was too young. Ah, it has wrung my heart!” cried the old lady, speaking more freely when her great announcement was made; “for her husband loves her no longer; yet my poor child would seek him over the world if she might. Strange—strange, is it not? that there should be one most dear to her who does not love Marie?”
But Cameron took no notice of this appeal. He still sat gazing at her, with his blank, dark face, and lips that were parched and motionless. She was full of pity, of distress, of anxiety for him; she went on speaking words which only echoed idly on his ear, and which even Cosmo could not attend to, expatiating in a breathless, agitated way, to cover his emotion and to gain a little time, upon the troubles of Marie’s lot, upon the desertion of her husband, her broken health and broken heart. In the midst of it, Cameron rose and held out his hand to her. The trembling mother of Marie took it, rising up to receive his farewell. She would have made a hundred anxious apologies for the involuntary and unconscious deceit from which he had suffered, but dared not. He shook hands with her hastily, with an air which could not endure speaking to.
“I shall leave St. Ouen so soon, that I may not be able to see you again,” said Cameron, with a forcible and forced steadiness which put all her trembling compassion to flight; and he looked full in her eyes, as if to dare her suspicions. “If I can not, farewell, and thank you for your kindness. I can but leave my best wishes for—Mademoiselle Marie.”
Before Cosmo could follow him—before another word could be said, Cameron was gone. They could hear him descending the stair, with an echoing footstep, as they stood together, the old lady and the lad, in mutual distress and embarrassment. Then Madame Roche turned to Cosmo, took his hand, and burst into tears.
“Could I tell?” cried Marie’s mother—“alas, my child! could I think that your tutor, so grave, so wise, would be thus moved? I am beside myself! I am grieved beyond measure! Alas, what shall I do?—a good man is in distress, and I am the cause!”
“Nay, it is not your fault, madame,” said Cosmo; “it’s no one’s fault—a mistake, a blunder, an accident; poor Cameron!” and the lad had enough ado to preserve his manhood and keep in his own tears.