The excited little Frenchwoman was not disposed to yield so quietly.
“Madame, I have been wounded, I have been shut out, I have been left alone in the crowd!” cried Desirée; “I demand of you to do me justice—see, I bleed! One of the vauriens struck me through the window with a stone, and the door has been closed upon me. I have stood before all the crowd alone!”
“I am sorry for it, my dear,” said the lady, coldly; “come in—you ought never to have gone to the door, or exposed yourself; young ladies do not do so in this country. Pray come in, Mademoiselle Desirée. I am sorry you are hurt—and, gentlemen, we are much obliged to you—good night.”
For the girl, half-reluctantly, half-indignantly, had obeyed her superior, and the door was calmly closed in the faces of Cosmo and Cameron, who stood together on the steps. Cosmo was highly incensed and wrathful. He could have had the heart to plunge into that cold, proper, lighted hall, to snatch the little heroine forth, and carry her off like a knight of romance.
“Do you hear how that woman speaks to her?” he cried, indignantly.
Cameron grasped his arm and drew him away.
“She’s French!” said the elder man, laconically, and without any enthusiasm; “and not to anger you, Cosmo, the lady is perfectly right.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Cosmo went home that evening much excited by his night’s adventures. Mrs. Payne, of Moray Place, was an ogre in the boy’s eyes, the Giantess Despair, holding bewitched princesses in vile durance and subjection—and Desirée, with the red mark upon her pretty forehead, with her little white hands clasped together, and her black eyes sparkling, was nothing less than a heroine. Cosmo could not forget the pretty attitude, the face glowing with resentment and girlish boldness; nor the cold gravity of the voice which bade her enter, and the unsympathetic disapproval in the lady’s face. He could not rest for thinking of it when he got home. In his new feeling of importance and influence as a person privileged to address the public, his first idea was to call upon Mrs. Payne in the morning, by way of protector to Desirée, to explain how the whole matter occurred; but on further thoughts Cosmo resolved to write a very grave and serious letter on the subject, vindicating the girl, and pointing out, in a benevolent way, the danger of repressing her high spirit harshly.
As soon as he was alone, he set about carrying out this idea in an epistle worthy the pages of the Auld Reekie Magazine, and written with a solemn authority which would have become an adviser of eighty instead of eighteen. He wrote it out in his best hand, put it up carefully, and resolved to leave it himself in the morning, lest the post (letters were dear in those days) might miscarry with so important a document. But Cosmo, who was much worn out, slept late in the morning, so late that Cameron came into his room, and saw the letter before he was up. It excited the curiosity of the Highlander, and Cosmo, somewhat shyly, admitted him to the privilege of reading it. It proved too much, however, for the gravity of his friend; and, vexed and ashamed at last, though by no means convinced the lad tore it in bits, and threw it into the fire-place. Cameron kept him occupied all day, breaking out, nevertheless, into secret chuckles of amusement now and then, which it was very difficult to find a due occasion for; and Cosmo was not even left to himself long enough to pass the door of the house in Moray Place, or to ask after the “wound” of his little heroine. He did the only thing which remained possible to him, he made the incident into a copy of verses, which he sent to the North British Courant, and which duly appeared in that enlightened newspaper—though whether it ever reached the eyes of Desirée, or touched the conscience of the schoolmistress by those allusions which, though delicately vailed, were still, Cosmo flattered himself, perfectly unmistakable by the chief actors in the scene, the boy could not tell.