CHAPTER LVII.
Cameron was not visible until the evening, when he sent for Cosmo to his own room. The lad obeyed the summons instantly; the room was rather a large one, very barely furnished, without any carpet on the floor, and with no fire in the stove. It was dimly lighted by one candle, which threw the apartment into a general twilight, and made a speck of particular illumination on the table where it stood, and by which sat Cameron, with his pocket-book and Baptiste’s bill before him. He was very pale, and somehow it seemed impossible to see his face otherwise than in profile, where it looked stern, rigid, and immoveable as an old Roman’s; but his manner, if perhaps a little graver, was otherwise exactly as usual. Cosmo was at a loss how to speak to him; he did not even like to look at his friend, who, however, showed no such embarrassment in his own person.
“We go to-morrow, Cosmo,” said Cameron, rather rapidly; “here is Baptiste’s bill to be settled, and some other things. We’ll go over to Dieppe the first thing in the morning—every thing had better be done to night.”
“The first thing in the morning! but I am afraid I—I can not go,” said Cosmo, hesitating a little.
“Why?” Cameron looked up at him imperiously—he was not in a humor to be thwarted.
“Because—not that I don’t wish to go, for I had rather be with you,” said Cosmo—“but because I made a discovery, and a very important one, to-day.”
“Ah?” said Cameron, with a smile and a tone of dreary satire; “this must have been a day for discoveries—what was yours?”
“It was about Madame Roche,” said Cosmo, with hesitation—he was afraid to broach the subject, in his anxiety for his friend, and yet it must be told.
“Just so,” said Cameron, with the same smile; “I knew it must be about Madame Roche—what then? I suppose it is no secret? nothing more than everybody knew?”
“Don’t speak so coldly,” entreated Cosmo, with irrestrainable feeling; “indeed it is something which no one could have dreamed of; Cameron, she is Mary. I never guessed or supposed it until to-day.”