Huntley had risen and approached to Madame Roche, though with reluctance, when she called him. Now she held his hand in one of hers, and stretched out the other for that of Desirée—while Huntley, confounded, confused, and amazed beyond expression, had not yet recovered himself sufficiently to speak. Before he could speak Cosmo had sprung to the side of Desirée, who stood holding back and meeting her mother’s appeal with a look of dumb defiance and exasperation, which might be very wrong, but was certainly very natural. Every one rose. But for the grief of the principal actors, and the painful embarrassment of all, the scene might almost have been ludicrous. Cosmo, who had grasped at Desirée’s hand, did not obtain it any more than her mother. The girl stood up, but kept her hold of the Mistress’s gown, as if for protection.
“No, no, no, no!” said Desirée, in a low, hurried, ashamed voice; “mother, no—no—no! I will not do it! Mamma, will you shame me? Oh, pity us! Is it thus we are to weep for Marie?”
“My child, it is justice,” cried Madame Roche, through her tears; “give him your hand—it is that Huntley may have his own.”
“But there is some strange mistake here,” said Huntley, whose brow burned with a painful flush; “Melmar was never mine, nor had I any real right to it. Years ago I have even forgotten that it once was possible. Be silent for a moment, Cosmo, I beg of you, and you, Mademoiselle Desirée, do not fear. Madame Roche, I thank you for your generous meaning, but it is an entire mistake in every way—let me explain it privately. Let us be alone first;—nay, nay, let me speak, then! I am my father’s heir, and our house is older than Melmar; and nothing in the world, were it the hand of a queen, could tempt me to call myself any thing but Livingstone of Norlaw!”
The Mistress had been standing up, like everybody else, an excited spectator. When Huntley said these words she sat down suddenly, with a glow and flush of triumph not to be described—the name of her husband and her son ringing in her ears like a burst of music; and then, for the first time, Desirée relinquished her hold, and held out her hand to Huntley, while Cosmo grasped his other hand and wrung it in both his with a violent pressure. The three did not think for that moment of Madame Roche, who had been looking in Huntley’s face all the time he spoke to her, and who, when he ended, dropped his hand silently and sank into her chair. She was leaning back now, with her white handkerchief over her face—and the hand that held it trembled. Poor Madame Roche! this was all her long thought of scheme had come to—she could only cover her face and forget the pang of failure in the bigger pang of grief—she did not say another word; she comprehended—for she was not slow of understanding—that Huntley’s little effusion of family pride was but a rapid and generous expedient to save him from a direct rejection of Desirée. And poor Madame Roche’s heart grew sick with the quick discouragement of grief. She closed her eyes, and heavier tears came from them than even those she had shed for Marie. She had tried her best to make them happy, she had failed; and now they for whose sake alone she had made all this exertion neglected and forgot her. It was too much for Madame Roche.
“Mamma, listen,” whispered Desirée, soothingly. “Ah, mamma, you might force mine—I should always obey you—but you can not force Huntley’s heart—he does not care for me; bah, that is nothing!—but there is one whom he cares for—one whom he has come home for—Katie, whom they all love! Mamma, you were right! he is noble, he is generous; but what is Melmar to Huntley? He has come back for Katie and his own home.”
“Katie?—some one else? My darling, does he love her?” said Madame Roche. “Then it is God who has undone all, Desirée, and I am content. Let him come to me, and I will bless him. I will bless you all, my children,” she said, raising herself up, and stretching her hands toward them. “Ah, friends, do you see them—so young and so like each other! and it was he who sought us, and not Huntley; and it is I who am wrong—and God is right!”
Saying which, Madame Roche kissed Huntley’s cheek, dismissing him so, and took Cosmo into her arms instead. Her sweet temper and facile mind forgot even her own failure. She put back Cosmo’s hair tenderly from his forehead and called him her hero. He was her son at least; and Desirée and Melmar, the two dreams of his fancy, between which, when he saw the girl first, he suspected no possible connection, came at once, a double gift, the one eagerly sought, the other totally unthought of, into the Benjamin’s portion of Cosmo Livingstone.
CHAPTER LXXVI.
“There’s aye plenty fools in this world,” said bowed Jaaoob; “a’thing else that’s human fails; but that commodity’s aye ready. I had my hopes of that laddie Livingstone. He has nae discrimination, and hasna seen the world, like some other folk, but for a’ that I thought I could perceive a ring of the right metal in him, and I’m no’ often wrang. And so Cosmo’s to be marriet! I dinna disapprove of his taste—that’s a different matter. I even had a great notion of her mysel’; but when the lad’s married there’s an end of him. Wha ever heard tell of a man coming to distinction with a wife at his tail?—na! I wash my hands of Cosmo—he shall never mair be officer of mine.”