While all these new events and changes were disturbing the quiet life of the home district at Melmar, and Norlaw, and Kirkbride, Cosmo Livingstone wandered over classic ground with Cameron and his young pupil, and sent now and then, with modest pride, his contribution to the Auld Reekie Magazine which had now been afloat for four months, and on account of which Mr. Todhunter, in his turn, sent remittances—not remarkably liberal, yet meant to be so, in letters full of a rude, yet honest, vanity, which impressed the lad with great ideas of what the new periodical was to do for the literary world. So far, all was satisfactory with Cosmo. He was very well off also in his companions. Cameron, who had been shy of undertaking a manner of life which was so new to him, and whom all the innkeepers had fleeced unmercifully on the first commencement of their travels—for the very pride which made him starve in his garret at home, out of everybody’s ken, made him, unused and inexperienced as he was, a lavish man abroad, where everybody was looking on, and where the thought of “meanness” troubled his spirit. But by this time, even Cameron had become used to the life of inns and journeys, and was no longer awed by the idea that landlords and waiters would suspect his former poverty, or that his pupil himself might complain of undue restraint. The said pupil, whose name was Macgregor, was good-natured and companionable, without being any thing more. They had been in Italy, in Switzerland, and in Germany. They had all acquired a traveler’s smattering of all the three tongues familiar on their road—they had looked at churches, and pictures, and palaces, till those eyes which were unguided by Murray, and knew just as much, or rather as little, of art, as the bulk of their countrymen at the time, became fairly bewildered, and no longer recollected which was which. They were now in France, in chilly February weather, on their way home. Why they pitched upon this town of St. Ouen for their halt it would have been hard to explain. It was in Normandy, for one reason, and Cosmo felt rather romantically interested in that old cradle of the conquering race. It was within reach of various places, of historic interest. Finally, young Macgregor had picked up somewhere a little archaic lore, which was not a common accomplishment in those days, and St. Ouen was rich in old architecture. Thus they lingered, slow to leave the shores of France, which was not sunny France in that February, but had been the beginning and was about to be the end of their pleasant wandering, and where accordingly they were glad to rest for a little before returning home.

Though, to tell the truth, Cosmo would a great deal rather have tarried on the very edge of the country, at the little sea-port which bowed Jaacob called “Deep,” and where that sentimental giant had seen, or fancied he had seen, the lady of his imagination. Cosmo had enjoyed his holiday heartily, as became his temperament and years, yet he was returning disappointed, and even a little chagrined and ashamed of himself. He had started with the full and strong idea that what his father could not succeed in doing, and what advertisements and legal search had failed in, he himself, by himself, could do—and he was now going home somewhat enlightened as to this first fallacy of youth. He had not succeeded, he had not had the merest gleam or prospect of success; Mary of Melmar was as far off, as totally lost, as though Cosmo Livingstone, who was to be her knight and champion, had never known the story of her wrongs, and Time was gliding away with silent, inevitable rapidity. A year and a half of the precious remaining interval was over. Huntley had been at his solitary work in Australia for nearly a whole year, and Huntley’s heart was bent on returning to claim Melmar, if he could but make money enough to assert his right to it. This Cosmo knew from his brother’s letters, those to himself, and those which his mother forwarded to him (in copy). He loved Huntley, but Cosmo thought he loved honor more—certainly he had more regard for the favorite dream of his own imagination, which was to restore the lost lady to her inheritance. But he had not found her, and now he was going home!

However, they were still in St. Ouen. Since Cameron recovered himself out of his first flutter of shy extravagance and fear lest he should be thought “mean,” they had adopted an economical method of living when they staid long in any one place. Instead of living at the inn, they had taken rooms for themselves, a proceeding which Cameron flattered himself made them acquainted with the natives. On this principle they acted at St. Ouen. Their rooms were, two on the premier Étage for Cameron and his pupil, and one au troisiÈme for Cosmo. Cosmo’s was a little room in a corner, opening by a slim, ill-hung door upon the common stair-case—where rapid French voices, and French feet, not very light, went up the echoing flight above to the mansarde, and made jokes, which Cosmo did not understand, upon the young Englishman’s boots, standing in forlorn trustfulness outside his door, to be cleaned. Though Cosmo had lived in a close in the High Street, he was quite unused to the public traffic of this stair-case, and sometimes suddenly extinguished his candle with a boy’s painful modesty, at the sudden fancy of some one looking through his keyhole, or got up in terror with the idea that a band of late revelers might pour in and find him in bed, in spite of the slender defense of lock and key. The room itself was very small, and had scarcely a feature in it, save the little clock on the mantel-piece, which always struck in direct and independent opposition to the great bell of St. Ouen. The window was in a corner, overshadowed by the deep projection of the next house, which struck off from Cosmo’s wall in a right angle, and kept him obstinately out of the sunshine. Up in the corner, au troisiÈme, with the next door neighbor’s blank gable edging all his light away from him, you would not have thought there was any thing very attractive in Cosmo’s window—yet it so happened that there was.

Not in the window itself, though that was near enough the clouds—but Cosmo, looking down, looked, as his good fortune was, into another window over the way, a pretty second floor, with white curtains and flowers to garnish it, and sunshine that loved to steal in for half the day. It was a pretty point of itself, with its little stand of early-blooming plants, and its white curtains looped up with ribbon. The plants were but early spring flowers, and did not at all screen the bright little window which Cosmo looked at, as though it had been a picture—and even when the evening lamp was lighted, no jealous blinds were drawn across the cheerful light. The lad was not impertinent nor curious, yet he sat in the dusk sometimes, looking down as into the heart of a little sacred picture. There were only two people ever in the room, and these were ladies, evidently a mother and daughter—one of them an invalid. That there was a sofa near the fire, on which some one nearly always lay—that once or twice in the day this recumbent figure was raised from the couch, and the two together paced slowly through the room—and that, perhaps once a week, a little carriage came to the door to take the sick lady out for a drive, was all that Cosmo knew of the second person in this interesting apartment; and the lad may have been supposed to be sufficiently disinterested in his curiosity, when we say that the only face which he ever fully saw at that bright window was the face of an old lady—a face as old as his mother’s. It was she who watered the flowers and looped the curtains—it was she who worked within their slight shadow, always visible—and it was she who, sometimes looking up and catching his eye, smiled either at or to Cosmo, causing him to retreat precipitately for the moment, yet leaving no glance of reproach on his memory to forbid his return.

Beauty is not a common gift; it is especially rare to the fanciful, young imagination, which is very hard to please, save where it loves. This old lady, however, old though she was, caught Cosmo’s poetic eye with all the glamour, somehow tenderer than if she had been young, of real loveliness. She must have been beautiful in her youth. She had soft, liquid, dark-blue eyes, full of a motherly and tender light now-a-days, and beautiful light-brown hair, in which, at this distance, it was not possible to see the silvery threads. She was tall, with a natural bend in her still pliant form, which Cosmo could not help comparing to the bend of a lily. He said to himself, as he sat at his window, that he had seen many pretty girls, but never any one so beautiful as this old lady. Her sweet eyes of age captivated Cosmo; he was never weary of watching her. He could have looked down upon her for an hour at a time, as she sat working with her white hands, while the sun shone upon her white lace cap, and on the sweet old cheek, with its lovely complexion, which was turned to the window; or when she half disappeared within to minister to the other half visible figure upon the sofa. Cosmo did not like to tell Cameron of his old lady, but he sat many an hour by himself in this little room, to the extreme wonderment of his friend, who supposed it was all for the benefit of the Auld Reekie Magazine, and smiled a little within himself at the lad’s literary enthusiasm. For his part, Cosmo dreamed about his opposite neighbors, and made stories for them in his own secret imagination, wondering if he ever could come to know them, or if he left St. Ouen, whether they were ever likely to meet again. It certainly did not seem probable, and there was no photography in those days to enable Cosmo to take pictures of his beautiful old lady as she sat in the sunshine. He took them on his own mind instead, and he made them into copies of verses, which the beautiful old lady never would see, nor if she saw could read—verses for the Auld Reekie Magazine and the North British Courant.