The Melmar family had just concluded their luncheon, and were still assembled in the dining-room—all but Mrs. Huntley, who had not yet come down stairs—when DesirÉe, flushed and excited from her interview with the Mistress, who waited for her in the little room, came hastily in upon the party; without noticing any of the others DesirÉe went up at once to the head of the house, who glared at her from behind his newspaper with his stealthy look of suspicion and watchfulness, as she advanced. Something in her look roused the suspicions of Mr. Huntley; he gave a quick, angry glance aside at Oswald, as if inquiring the cause of the girl’s excitement, which his son replied to with a side-look of sullen resentment and mortification—an unspoken angry dialogue which often passed between the father and son, for Melmar had imposed upon the young man the task of keeping DesirÉe in ignorance and happiness, a charge which Oswald, who had lost even the first novelty of amusing himself with her found unspeakably galling, a constant humiliation. The little Frenchwoman came up rapidly to her host and employer—her cheek glowing, her eye shining, her small foot in her stout little winter-shoe sounding lightly yet distinctly on the carpet. They all looked at her with involuntary expectation. Something newly-discovered and strange shone in DesirÉe’s face.

“Sir,” she said, quickly, “I come to thank you for being kind to me. I come because it is honest to tell you—I am going away.”

“Going away? What’s wrong?” said Melmar, with a little alarm; “come into my study, mademoiselle, and we will put all right, never fear; that little deevil Patricia has been at her again!”

DesirÉe did not wait for the burst of shrewish tears and exclamations which even Patricia’s extreme curiosity could not restrain. She answered quickly and with eagerness,

“No, no, it is not Patricia—it is no one—it is news from home; you know it already—you know it!” cried the girl. “My mother! She is poor; I have had to come away from her to be a governess; and you, alas, knew who she was, but said nothing of it to me!”

And involuntarily DesirÉe’s eyes sought, with a momentary indignant glance, the face of Oswald. He sat perfectly upright in his chair staring at her, growing red and white by turns; red with a fierce, selfish anger, white with a baffled, ungenerous shame, the ignominy, not of doing wrong, but of being found out. But even in that moment, in the mortifying consciousness that this little girl had discovered and despised him—the revenge, or rather, for it was smaller—the spite of a mean mind, relieved itself at least in the false wooer’s face. He turned to her with the bitterest sneer poor DesirÉe had ever seen. It seemed to say, “what cause but this could have induced me to notice you?” She did not care for him, but she thought she once had cared, and the sneer galled the poor little Frenchwoman to the heart.

“You are ungenerous—you!” she exclaimed, with a fiery vehemence and passion, “you delude me, and then you sneer. Shall I sneer at you, you sordid, you who wrong the widow? But no! If you had not known me I should have thanked you, and my mother would never, never have injured one who was good to DesirÉe; but now it is war, and I go. Farewell, Monsieur! you did not mean to be kind, but only to blind me—ah, I was wrong to speak of thanks—farewell!”

“What do you mean? who has deceived you?” cried Joanna, stepping forward and shaking DesirÉe somewhat roughly by the arm; “tell us all plain out what it is. I’m as sure as I can be that it’s him that’s wrong—and I think shame of Oswald to see him sit there, holding his tongue when he should speak; but you shanna look so at papa!”

And Joanna stood between Melmar and her excited little friend, thrusting the latter away, and yet holding her fast at arm’s length. Melmar put his arm on his daughter’s shoulder and set her quietly aside.

“Let us hear what this discovery is,” said Mr. Huntley; “who is your mother, mademoiselle?”

At which cool question DesirÉe blazed for an instant into a flush of fury, but immediately shrunk with a cool dread of having been wrong and foolish. Perhaps, after all, they did not know—perhaps it was she who was about to heighten the misfortune of their loss and ruin by ungenerous insinuations. DesirÉe paused and looked doubtfully in Melmar’s face. He was watching her with his usual stealthy vigilance, looking, as usual, heated and fiery, curving his bushy, grizzled eyebrows over those keen cat-like eyes. She gazed at him with a doubtful, almost imploring, look—was she injuring him?—had he not known?

“Come, mademoiselle,” said Melmar, gaining confidence as he saw the girl was a little daunted, “I have but a small acquaintance in your country. Who was your mother? It does not concern us much, so far as I can see, but still, let’s hear. Oswald, my lad, can’t you use your influence?—we are all waiting to hear.”

Oswald, however, had given up the whole business. He was pleased to be able to annoy his father and affront DesirÉe at last. Perhaps the rage and disappointment in his heart were in some sort a relief to him. He was at least free now to express his real sentiments. He got up hastily from his chair, thrust it aside so roughly that it fell, and with a suppressed but audible oath, left the room. Then DesirÉe stood alone, with Melmar watching her, with Patricia crying spitefully close at hand, and even Joanna, her own friend, menacing and unfriendly. The poor girl did not know where to turn or what to do.

“Perhaps I am wrong,” she said, with a momentary falter. “There was no reason, it is true, why you should know mamma. And perhaps it is unkind and ungenerous of me. But—ah, Joanna, you guessed it when I did not know!—you said she must have been here—you are honest and knew no harm! My mother was born at Melmar; it is hers, though she is poor—and she is coming home.”

“Coming home! this is but a poor story, mademoiselle,” said Melmar. “That person died abroad long ago, and was mother to nobody; but it’s clever, by George! uncommonly clever. Her mother’s coming home, and my land belongs to her! cool, that, I must say. Will you take Patricia for your lady’s maid, mademoiselle?”

“Ah, you sneer, you all sneer!” cried DesirÉe. “I could sneer too, if I were as guilty; but it is true, and you know it is true; you, who are our kinsman and should have cared for us—you, who have planned to deceive a poor stranger girl—you know it is true!”

“If he does,” cried Joanna, “you’re no’ to stand there and tell him. He has been as kind to you as if you belonged to us—you don’t belong to us—go—go away this moment. I will not let you stay here!”

And Joanna stamped her foot in the excess of her indignation and sympathy with her father, who looked on, through all this side-play of feelings, entirely unmoved. Poor little DesirÉe, on the contrary, was stung and wounded beyond measure by Joanna’s violence. She gave her one terrified, passionate look, half reproachful, half defiant, had hard ado to restrain a burst of girlish, half-weeping recrimination, and then turned round with one sob out of her poor little heart, which felt as though it would burst, and went away with a forlorn, heroical dignity out of the room. Poor DesirÉe would not have looked back for a kingdom, but she hoped to have been called back, for all that, and could almost have fallen down on the threshold with mortification and disappointment, when she found that no one interfered to prevent her withdrawal. The poor child was full of sentiment, but had a tender heart withal. She could not bear to leave a house where she had lived so long after this fashion, and but for her pride, DesirÉe would have rushed back to fall into Joanna’s arms, and beg everybody’s pardon; but her pride sustained her in the struggle, and at length vanquished her “feelings". Instead of rushing into Joanna’s arms, she went to the Mistress, who still waited for her in the little room, and who had already been edified by hearing the fall of Oswald’s chair, and seeing that gentleman, as he went furiously forth, kicking Patricia’s lap-dog out of his way in the hall. The Mistress was human. She listened to those sounds and witnessed that sight with a natural, but not very amiable sentiment. She was rather pleased than otherwise to be so informed that she had brought a thunderbolt to Melmar.

“Let them bear it as they dow,” said the Mistress, with an angry triumph; “neither comfort nor help to any mortal has come out of Me’mar for mony a day;” and she received the unfortunate little cause of all this commotion with more favor than before. Poor little DesirÉe came in with a quivering lip and a full eye, scarcely able to speak, but determined not to cry, which was no small trial of resolution. The family of Melmar were her mother’s enemies—some of them had tried to delude, and some had been unkind to herself—yet she knew them; and the Mistress, who came to take her away, was a stranger. It was like going out once more into the unknown world.

So DesirÉe left Melmar, with a heart which fluttered with pain, anger, indignation, and a strange fear of the future, and the Mistress guided to Norlaw almost with tenderness the child of that Mary who had been a lifelong vexation to herself. They left behind them no small amount of dismay and anxiety, all the house vaguely finding out that something was wrong, while Joanna alone stood by her father’s side, angry, rude, and careless of every one, bestowing her whole impatient regards upon him.