“She is the Lady of Melmar, as she always was,” said Cosmo, with a little pride.
“And what’s to become of the auld family—father and son—no’ to say of the twa sisters and the auld auntie,” said Jaacob, with a grim smile. “So that’s the story! Confound them a’! I’m no’ a man to be cheated out of my sympathies. And I’m seldom wrang—so if you’ve ony thoughts that way, callant, I advise ye to relinquish them. Ye may be half-a-hunder’ poets if ye like, and as mony mair to the back o’ that, but if the Huntley lad liket her she’ll stick to him.”
“That is neither your concern nor mine!” cried Cosmo, loftily. But, as Jaacob laughed and went on, the lad began to feel unaccountably aggravated, to lose his temper, and make angry answers, which made his discomfiture capital fun to the little giant. At length, Cosmo hurried away. It was the same day on which the Mistress paid her visit to Desirée, and Cosmo could not help feeling excited and curious about the issue of his mother’s invitation. Thoughts which made the lad blush came into his mind as he went slowly over Tyne, looking up at that high bank, from which the evening sunshine, chill, yet bright, was slowly disappearing—where the trees began to bud round the cottages, and where the white gable of the manse still crowned the peaceful summit—that manse where Katie Logan, with her elder-sister smile, was no longer mistress. Somehow, there occurred to him a wandering thought about Katie, who was away—he did not know where—and Huntley, who was at the ends of the earth. Huntley had not actually lost any thing, Cosmo said to himself, yet Huntley seemed disinherited and impoverished to the obstinate eyes of fancy. Cosmo could not have told, either, why he associated his brother with Katie Logan, now an orphan and absent, yet he did so involuntarily. He thought of Huntley and Katie, both poor, far separated, and perhaps never to meet again; he thought of Cameron in his sudden trouble; and then his thoughts glided off with a little bitterness, to that perverse woman’s love, which always seemed to cling to the wrong object. Madame Roche herself, perhaps, first of all, though the very fancy seemed somehow a wrong to his mother, Marie fretting peevishly for her French husband, Desirée giving her heart to Oswald Huntley. The lad turned upon his heel with a bitter impatience, and set off for a long walk in the opposite direction as these things glided into his mind. To be sure, he had nothing to do with it; but still it was all wrong—a distortion of nature—and it galled him in his thoughts.
CHAPTER LXIII.
The presence of Desirée made no small sensation in the house of Norlaw, which did not quite know what to make of her. The Mistress herself, after that first strange impulse of kin and kindness which prompted her to bring the young stranger home, relapsed into her usual ways, and did not conceal from either son or servant that she expected to be “fashed” by the little Frenchwoman; while Marget, rather displeased that so important a step should be taken without her sanction, and mightily curious to know the reason, was highly impatient at first of Desirée’s name and nation, and discontented with her presence here.
“I canna faddom the Mistress,” said Marget, angrily; “what she’s thinking upon, to bring a young flirt of a Frenchwoman into this decent house, and ane of our lads at home is just beyond me. Do I think her bonnie? No’ me! She’s French, and I daur to say, a papisher to the boot; but the lads will, take my word for it—callants are aye keen about a thing that’s outray. I’m just as thankfu’ as I can be that Huntley’s at the other end of the world—there’s nae fears of our Patie—and Cosmo, you see, he’s ower young.”
This latter proposition Marget repeated to herself as she went about her dairy. It did not seem an entirely satisfactory statement of the case, for if Cosmo was too young to be injured, Desirée was also a couple of years his junior, and could scarcely be supposed old enough to do any great harm.
“Ay, but it’s in them frae their cradle,” said the uncharitable Marget, as she rinsed her great wooden bowls and set them ready for the milk. The honest retainer of the family was quite disturbed by this new arrival. She could not “get her mouth about the like of thae outlandish names,” so she never called Desirée any thing but Miss, which title in Marget’s lips, unassociated with a Christian name, was by no means a title of high respect, and she grumbled as she was quite unwont to grumble, over the additional trouble of another inmate. Altogether Marget was totally dissatisfied.
While Desirée, suddenly dropped into this strange house, every custom of which was strange to her, and where girlhood and its occupations were unknown, felt somewhat forlorn and desolate, it must be confessed, and sometimes even longed to be back again in Melmar, where there were many women, and where her pretty needle-works and graceful accomplishments were not reckoned frivolous, the Mistress was busy all day long, and when she had ended her household employments, sat down with her work-basket to mend shirts or stockings with a steadiness which did not care to accept any assistance.
“Thank you, they’re for my son, Huntley; I like to do them a’ mysel’,” she would answer to Desirée’s offer of aid. “Much obliged to you, but Cosmo’s stockings, poor callant, are no work for the like of you.” In like manner, Desirée was debarred from the most trifling assistance in the house. Marget was furious when she ventured to wash the Mistress’s best tea-service, or to sweep the hearth on occasion.