On one of these days Cameron came again to Cosmo with a letter in his hand. His look was very different now—it was grave, resolute, determined, as of a man on the verge of a new life. He showed the letter to his young companion. It was from Macgregor’s father, intimating his wish that they should return immediately, and expressing a little surprise to hear that they should have remained so long in St. Ouen. Cameron crushed it up in his hand when it was returned to him; a gesture not so much of anger as of high excitement powerfully restrained.

“We must go, then, I suppose?” said Cosmo; but the lad looked up rather doubtfully and anxiously in his friend’s face—for Cameron did not look like a man obedient, who was ready to submit to a recall.

“I will tell you to-morrow,” said the Highlander; “yes—it is time—I don’t resent what this man says—he is perfectly right. I will go or I will not go to-morrow.”

What did this mean? for the “will not go” was a great deal more than a passive negative. It meant—not a continued dallying in St. Ouen—it meant all that Cameron imagined in that great new torrent of hopes, and loves, and purposes, which he now called life. Then he went to Cosmo’s window and glanced out for a moment; then he returned with a deep, almost angry flush on his face, muttering something about “never alone,"—then he thrust his arm into Cosmo’s, and bade him come along.

“I am going to see Madame Roche,” cried Cameron, with a certain recklessness of tone. “Come—you’re always welcome there—and four is better company than three.”

It was no little risk to put Cosmo’s temper to—but he yielded, though he was somewhat piqued by the address, feeling an interest and anxiety for something about to happen, which he could not perfectly define. They found Madame Roche alone, seated by the window working, as usual—but Marie was not there. The old lady received them graciously and kindly, as was her wont. She answered to Cameron’s inquiries that Marie’s headache was more violent than usual, and that she was lying down. Poor Marie! she was very delicate; she suffered a great deal, the dear child!

“Invalids have sometimes a kind of inspiration as to what will cure them,” said Cameron, steadily fixing his eyes upon Madame Roche, “why will you not let her go where she wishes to go? Where is it? I should think the trial worth more than fatigue, more than labor, ay—if man had more to give—more even than life!”

Madame Roche looked up at him suddenly, with a strange surprise in her eyes—a painful, anxious, terrified wonder, which was quite inexplicable to Cosmo.

“Alas, poor child!” she said hurriedly, and in a low voice. “I would grudge neither fatigue nor labor for my Marie; but it is vain. So you are going away from St. Ouen? ah, yes, I know—I hear every thing. I saw your young Monsieur Macgregor half an hour ago; he said letters had come, and you were going. We shall grieve when you are gone, and we shall not forget you, neither I nor my Marie.”

Cameron’s face changed; a sweetness, an elevation, a tender emotion, quite unusual to those strong features, came over them.

“It is by no means certain that I shall go,” he said, in a low and strangely softened voice.

“Does Mademoiselle Marie know?”

And once more he glanced round the room, and at her vacant sofa, with a tender reverence and respect which touched Cosmo to the heart, and filled the lad with understanding at once and pity. Could he suppose that it was hearing of this that aggravated Marie’s headache? could he delude himself with the thought that she was moved by the prospect of his departure? Poor Cameron! Madame Roche was looking at him too with a strange anxiety, trying to read his softened and eloquent face. The old lady paused with an embarrassed and hesitating perplexity, looking from Cosmo to Cameron, from Cameron back again to Cosmo. The lad thought she asked an explanation from him with her eyes, but Cosmo had no explanation to give.

“My friend,” said Madame Roche, at last, trying to recover her smile, but speaking with an evident distress which she endeavored in vain to conceal—“you must not say Mademoiselle Marie. The people do so, for they have known her as a girl; but they all know her story, poor child! I fancied you must have heard it from Baptiste or Margot, who love to talk. Ah! have they been so prudent?—it is strange.”

Madame Roche paused again, as if to take breath. Cosmo instinctively and silently moved his chair further away, and only looked on, a deeply-moved spectator, not an actor in the scene. Cameron did not say a word, but he grasped the little marble table with a hand as cold as itself, and looked at Madame Roche with the face of a man whose tongue clove to his mouth, and who could not have spoken for his life. She, trembling a little, afraid to show her emotion, half frightened at the look of the person she addressed, proceeded, after her pause, with a rapid, interrupted voice.

“My poor, tender Marie—poor child!” said the mother. “Alas! she is no more mademoiselle—she is married; she was married years ago, when she was too young. Ah, it has wrung my heart!” cried the old lady, speaking more freely when her great announcement was made; “for her husband loves her no longer; yet my poor child would seek him over the world if she might. Strange—strange, is it not? that there should be one most dear to her who does not love Marie?”

But Cameron took no notice of this appeal. He still sat gazing at her, with his blank, dark face, and lips that were parched and motionless. She was full of pity, of distress, of anxiety for him; she went on speaking words which only echoed idly on his ear, and which even Cosmo could not attend to, expatiating in a breathless, agitated way, to cover his emotion and to gain a little time, upon the troubles of Marie’s lot, upon the desertion of her husband, her broken health and broken heart. In the midst of it, Cameron rose and held out his hand to her. The trembling mother of Marie took it, rising up to receive his farewell. She would have made a hundred anxious apologies for the involuntary and unconscious deceit from which he had suffered, but dared not. He shook hands with her hastily, with an air which could not endure speaking to.

“I shall leave St. Ouen so soon, that I may not be able to see you again,” said Cameron, with a forcible and forced steadiness which put all her trembling compassion to flight; and he looked full in her eyes, as if to dare her suspicions. “If I can not, farewell, and thank you for your kindness. I can but leave my best wishes for—Mademoiselle Marie.”

Before Cosmo could follow him—before another word could be said, Cameron was gone. They could hear him descending the stair, with an echoing footstep, as they stood together, the old lady and the lad, in mutual distress and embarrassment. Then Madame Roche turned to Cosmo, took his hand, and burst into tears.

“Could I tell?” cried Marie’s mother—“alas, my child! could I think that your tutor, so grave, so wise, would be thus moved? I am beside myself! I am grieved beyond measure! Alas, what shall I do?—a good man is in distress, and I am the cause!”

“Nay, it is not your fault, madame,” said Cosmo; “it’s no one’s fault—a mistake, a blunder, an accident; poor Cameron!” and the lad had enough ado to preserve his manhood and keep in his own tears.

Then Madame Roche made him sit down by her and tell her all about his friend. Cosmo would rather have gone away to follow Cameron, and know his wishes immediately about leaving St. Ouen, but was persuaded, without much difficulty, that it was kinder to leave the Highlander alone in the first shock of the discovery he had made. And Madame Roche was much interested in the story of the student, whose holiday had ended so sadly. She wished, with tears in her eyes, that she could do any thing to comfort, any thing to help him on. And in turn she told the story of her own family to Cosmo; how Marie’s husband had turned out a vagabond, and worthless; how he had deserted his girlish wife in the beginning of her illness, leaving her alone and unattended, at a distance even from her mother; how they had heard nothing of him for three years—yet how, notwithstanding all, the poor Marie wept for him constantly, and tried to persuade her mother to set out on the hopeless enterprise of finding him again.

“My poor child!” said Madame Roche; “she forgets every thing, my friend, but that she loves him. Ah, it is natural to us women; we remember that, and we remember nothing more.”

Cosmo could not help a momentary spark of indignation. He thought Marie very selfish and cold-hearted, and could not forgive her his friend’s heart-break:—

“Mademoiselle Marie should not forget you,” he said.

Though he dealt with such phenomena occasionally in his verses, and made good sport with them, like other young poets, Cosmo was, notwithstanding, too natural and sensible, not to pause with a momentary wonder over this strange paradox and contradiction of events. To think of such a man as Cameron losing his wits and his heart for love of this weak and perverse woman, who vexed her mother’s heart with perpetual pining for the husband who had ill-used and deserted her! How strange it was!

“Marie does not forget me, my child; she is not to blame,” said Madame Roche; “it is nature; do not I also know it? Ah, I was undutiful myself! I loved my poor Jean better than my father; but I have a little one who is very fond of me; she is too young for lovers; she thinks of nothing but to make a home in my own country for Marie and me. My poor Marie! she can not bear to go away from St. Ouen, lest he should come back to seek her; she will either go to seek him, or stay; and so I can not go to DesirÉe nor to my own country. Yet, perhaps, if Marie would but be persuaded! My little DesirÉe is in Scotland. They think much of her where she is. It is all very strange; she is in a house which once was home to me when I was young. I think it strange my child should be there.”

“DesirÉe?” repeated Cosmo, gazing at his beautiful old lady with awakened curiosity. He remembered so well the pretty little figure whose bearing, different as they were otherwise, was like that of Madame Roche. He looked in her face, anxious, but unable, to trace any resemblance. DesirÉe! Could it be Joanna’s DesirÉe—the heroine of the broken windows—she who was at Melmar? The lad grew excited as he repeated the name—he felt as though he held in his hand the clue to some secret—what could it be?

“Do you know the name? Ah, my little one was a true DesirÉe,” said Madame Roche; “she came when the others were taken away—she was my comforter. Nay, my friend—she wrote to me of one of your name! One—ah, look at me!—one who was son of my old friend. My child, let me see your face—can it be you who are son of Patrick, my good cousin? What!—is it then possible? Are you the young Livingstone of Norlaw?”

Cosmo rose up in great excitement, withdrawing from the half embrace into which Madame Roche seemed disposed to take him; the lad’s heart bounded with an audible throb, rising to his throat:—

“Do you know me? Did you know my father? Was he your cousin?” he cried, with an increasing emotion. “He was Patrick Livingstone, of Norlaw, a kinsman of the old Huntleys; and you—you—tell me! You are Mary of Melmar! I know it! I have found you! Oh, father! I have done my work at last.”

The lad’s voice broke into a hoarse cry—he had no words to express himself further, as he stood before her with burning cheeks and a beating heart, holding out his hands in appeal and in triumph. He had found her! he could not doubt, he could not hesitate—gazing into that beautiful old face, the whole country-side seemed to throng about him with a clamorous testimony. All those unanimous witnesses who had told him of her beauty, the little giant at the smithy to whom her foot rung “like siller bells,” the old woman who remembered her face “like a May morning,” rushed into Cosmo’s memory as though they had been present by his side. He cried out again with a vehement self-assurance and certainty, “You are Mary of Melmar!” He kissed her hand as if it had been the hand of a queen—he forgot all his previous trouble and sympathy—he had found her! his search had not been made in vain.

“I am Mary Huntley, the daughter of Melmar,” said the old lady, with her beautiful smile. “Yes, my child, it is true—I left my father and my home for the sake of my poor Jean. Ah, he was very fond of me! I am not sorry; but you sought me?—did you seek me?—that is strange, that is kind; I know not why you should seek me. My child, do not bring me into any more trouble—tell me why you sought for me?”

“I sought you as my father sought you!” cried Cosmo; “as he charged us all to seek you when he died. I sought you, because you have been wronged. Come home with me, madame. I thank God for Huntley that he never had it!—I knew I should find you! It is not for any trouble. It is because Melmar—Melmar itself—your father’s house—is yours!”

“Melmar—my father’s house—where my DesirÉe is now?—nay, my friend, you dream,” said the old lady, trying to smile, yet growing pale; she did not comprehend it—she returned upon what he said about his father; she was touched to tears to think that Norlaw had sought for her—that she had not been forgotten—that he himself, a young champion, had come even here with the thought of finding her;—but Melmar, Melmar, her father’s house! The old Mary of Melmar, who had fled from that house and been disinherited, could not receive this strange idea—Melmar! the word died on her lip as the voice of Marie called her from an inner chamber. She rose with the promptness of habit, resuming her tender mother-smile, and answering without a pause. She only waved her hand to Cosmo as the boy left her to her immediate duties. It was not wonderful that she found it difficult to take up the thread of connection between that life in which she herself had been an only child, and this in which she was Marie’s nursing Mother. They were strangely unlike indeed.