When Cosmo rushed forth from Melmar with his heart a-flame, and made his way out through the trees to the unsheltered and dusty highway, the sound of the Sabbath bells was just beginning to fall through the soft summer air, so bright with the sunshine of the morning. Somehow, the sound seemed to recall him, in a moment, to the sober home life out of which he had rushed into this feverish episode and crisis of his own existence. His heart was angry, and sore, and wounded. To think of the usual familiar routine of life disgusted him—his impulse was to fly out of everybody’s reach, and separate himself from a world where everybody was ready to sacrifice the happiness of others to the merest freak or crochet of his own. But the far off tinkle of the Kirkbride bell, though it was no wonder of harmony, dropped into Cosmo’s ear and heart like the voice of an angel. Just then, his mother, proudly leaning upon Huntley’s arm, was going up the bank of Tyne to thank God for her son’s return. Just then, DesirÉe, who had left Melmar before him, was walking softly, in her white summer robes, to the Sabbath service, little doubting to see Cosmo there; and out of all the country round, the rural families, in little groups, were coming up every path, all tending toward the same place. Cosmo sprang impatiently over a stile, and made his way through a corn field, where the rustling green corn on either side of the path, just bursting from the blade, was almost as tall as himself. He did not care to meet the church goers, who would not have been slow to remark upon his heated and uneasy looks, or even upon the novel circumstance of his being here instead of at “the kirk.” This same fact of itself communicated an additional discomfort to Cosmo. He felt in his conscience, which was young and tender, the unsabbatical and agitating manner in which he had spent the Sabbath morning, and the bell seemed ringing reproaches into his ear as he hastened through the rustling corn. Perhaps not half a dozen times before in his life, save during the time of his travels, had Cosmo voluntarily occupied the Sabbath morning with uses of his own. He had dreamed through its sacred hours many a time, for he was “in love”, and a poet; but his dreams had gone on to the cadence of the new minister’s sermon, and taken a sweeter echo out of the rural psalms and thanksgivings; and he felt as a Scottish youth of religious training was like to feel under such circumstances—his want of success and present unhappiness increased by the consciousness that he was using the weekly rest for his own purposes, thinking his own thoughts, doing his own business, and filling, with all the human agitation of fears and hopes, selfish and individual, the holy quiet of the Sabbath day.

And when Cosmo reached Norlaw, which was solitary and quiet like a house deserted, and when the little girl who helped Marget in the dairy rose from her seat at the clean table in the kitchen, where, with her Bible open before her, she was seeking out “proofs” for her “questions,” to let him in, not without a wondering air of disapproval, the feeling grew even stronger. He threw himself into his mother’s easy-chair, in the dining-parlor, feeling the silence grow upon him like a fascination. Even the Mistress’s work-basket was put out of the way, and there was no open book here to be ruffled by the soft air from the open window. Upon the table was the big Bible, the great jug full of red roses, and that volume of Hervey’s Meditations, which the Mistress had certainly not been reading—and the deep, unbroken Sabbath stillness brooded over him as if it were something positive and actual, and not a mere absence of sound. And as he thought of it, the French household at Melmar, with its fancies, its agitations, its romantic plans and troubles of feeling, looked more and more to Cosmo discordant and inharmonious with the time; and he himself jarred like a chord out of tune upon this calm of the house and the Sabbath; jarred strangely, possessed as he was by an irritated and injured self-consciousness—that bitter sensation of wrong and disappointment, which somehow seemed to separate Cosmo from every thing innocent and peaceful in the world.

For why was it always so—always a perennial conspiracy, some hard, arbitrary will laying its bar upon the course of nature? Cosmo’s heart was sore within him with something more than a vexed contemplation of the anomaly, with an immediate, pursuing, hard mortification of his own. He was bitterly impatient of Madame Roche in this new and strange phase of her character, and strangely perplexed how to meet it. For Cosmo had a poetic jealousy of the honor and spirit of his best beloved. He felt that he could not bear it, if DesirÉe for his sake defied her mother—he could not tolerate the idea that she was like to do so, yet longed, and feared, and doubted, full of the most contradictory and unreasonable feelings, and sure only of being grieved and displeased whatever might happen. So he felt as he sat by himself, with his eyes vacantly fixed upon the red roses and the big Bible, wondering, impatient, anxious beyond measure, to know what DesirÉe would do.

But that whole silent day passed over him unenlightened; he got through the inevitable meals he could scarcely tell how—replied or did not reply to his mother’s remarks, which he scarcely noticed were spoken at, and not to him, wandered out in the afternoon to Tyneside and the Kelpie, without finding any one there—and finally, with a pang of almost unbearable rebellion, submitted to the night and sleep which he could not avoid. To-morrow he had to return to Edinburgh, to go away, leaving his brother in possession of the field—his brother, to whom Madame Roche meant to give DesirÉe, in compensation for his lost fortune. Cosmo had forgotten all about Katie Logan by this time; it was not difficult, for he knew scarcely any thing; and with a young lover’s natural pride and vanity, could not doubt that any man in the world would be but too eager to contend with him for such a prize as DesirÉe Roche.

And to-morrow he had to go away!—to return to Mr. Todhunter’s office, to read all the trashy stories, all the lamentable criticisms, all the correspondence, making small things great, which belonged to the Auld Reekie Magazine. Cosmo had not hitherto during his life been under much compulsion of the must, and accordingly found it all the harder to consent to it now. And he was growing very weary of his occupation besides. He had got a stage beyond his youthful facility of rhyme, and was, to say the truth, a little ashamed now of his verses, and of those flowery prose papers, which the Mistress still read with delight. He began to suspect that literature, after all, was not his vocation, and at this moment would rather have carried a laborer’s hod; or followed the plow, than gone to that merchandise of words which awaited him in Edinburgh. So he rose, sullen and discontented, ready to quarrel with any or every one who thwarted him, and feeling toward Huntley rather more like an enemy than like a brother.

And Cosmo had but just risen from the early breakfast table when a note was put into his hand. Marget brought it to him, with rather an ostentation of showing what she brought, and Cosmo had to read it under the eyes of his mother and Huntley, neither of whom could help casting many glances at the young man’s disturbed face. It was the first letter he had ever received from DesirÉe—no wonder that he hurried out when he had glanced at it, and did not hear that the Mistress called him back; for it was a very tantalizing, unsatisfactory communication. This is what DesirÉe said:—

“I knew it would be so. Why are you so restless, so impatient—why do you not be calm and wait like me? Mamma has set her heart upon what she says. She will not yield if you pray to her forever. She loves me, she loves you; it would make her happy; but, alas, poor mamma! She has set her thoughts upon the other, and will not change. Why do you vex her, you, me, every one? Be silent, and all will be well.

“For I am not in haste, Monsieur Cosmo, if you are. I am able to wait—me! I know you went away in great anger, and did not come to church, and were cross all day, and your mother will think I am to blame. But if you will be impatient, am I to blame? I tell you to wait, as I shall, to be good and silent, and see what will happen; but you do not regard me.

“Farewell, then, for a week. I write to you because I can not help it this time, but I will not write again. Be content, then, restless boy; au revoir!

“DesirÉe.”