“Do you think I could bear the thought—me!” cried the Mistress energetically; “have ye kent me all your days, Huntley Livingstone, and do ye dare to think your mother would baulk your fortune for ease to hersel’? is it like me? would any mortal even me with the like, but your ainsel’?”

The Mistress stood by herself in the middle of the room, with her hand on the table—her eyes shone with a mortified and grieved fire through unshed tears—her heightened color—her frame, which seemed to vibrate with a visible pang—the pain of unappreciated love, which looked like anger in her face—showed how little congenial to her mind was Huntley’s self-abnegation. There was no sacrifice in the world which she herself could not and would not have made for her children; but to feel herself the person for whom a sacrifice was needed, a hindrance to her son’s prospects, a person to be provided for, struck with intense and bitter mortification the high spirit of the Mistress. She could not be content with this subordinate and passive position. Poverty, labor, want itself, would have come easier to her proud, tender motherhood, than thus to feel herself a bar upon the prospects of her boy.

When Huntley looked into his mother’s face, he thanked God silently within himself, that he had held his council of war upon the hill-side, and not in the Norlaw dining-parlor. It was the first time in his life that the young man had made an arbitrary personal decision, taking counsel with none; he had been naturally somewhat doubtful in his statement of it, being unused to such independent action—but now he rejoiced that he had made his conclusion alone. He came to his mother with tenderness, which perhaps if it touched her secretly, made her displeasure only the greater so far as appearance went—for the mother of this house, who was not born of a dependent nature, was still too young and vigorous in her own person, and too little accustomed to think of her sons as men, to be able to receive with patience the new idea that their relative positions were so far changed, and that it was now her children’s part to provide for her, instead of hers to provide for them.

“Mother, suppose we were to fail—which is as likely as success,” said Huntley, “and I had to go away—after all, should you like me to leave no home to think of—no home to return to?—is that not reason enough to make you content with Norlaw?”

“Hold your peace!” cried the Mistress—“hame! do you mean to tell me that I couldna make a cothouse in Kirkbride, or a lodging in a town look like hame to my own bairns, if Providence ordained it sae, and their hearts were the same? What’s four walls here or there?—till you’ve firesides of your ain, your mother’s your hame wherever she may be. Am I a weak auld wife to be maintained at the ingleside with my son’s toil—or to have comfort, or fortune, or hope sacrificed to me? Eh, laddie, Guid forgive ye!—me that would shear in the harvest field, or guide the kye, or do any day’s work in this mortal world, with a cheerful heart, if it was needful, for the sake of you!”

“Ay, mother,” cried Cosmo, suddenly springing up from the table where he had been sitting stooping over a book in his usual attitude, without any apparent notice of the conversation. “Ay, mother,” cried the boy, “you could break your heart, and wear out your life for us, because it’s in your nature—but you’re too proud to think that it’s our nature as well, and that all you would do for your sons, your sons have a right to do for you!”

The boy’s pale face shone, and his eyes sparkled; his slender, tall, overgrown boyish figure, his long arms stretching out of the narrow sleeves of his jacket, his long slender hands, and long hair, the entire and extreme youthfulness of his whole appearance, so distinct from the fuller strength and manhood of his brothers, and animated by the touch of a delicate spirit, less sober and more fervid than theirs, struck strangely and suddenly upon the two who had hitherto held this discussion alone. An instantaneous change came over the Mistress’s face; the fire in her eyes melted into a tender effusion of love and sorrow, the yearning of the mother who was a widow. Those tears, which her proud temper and independent spirit had drawn into her eyes, fell with a softness which their original cause was quite incapable of. She could not keep to her first emotions; she could not restrain the expansion of her heart toward the boy who was still only a boy, and his father’s son.

“My bairn!” cried the Mistress, with a short sob. He was the youngest, the tenderest, the most like him who was gone—and Cosmo’s words had an unspeakable pathos in their enthusiasm—the heroism of a child!

After this the mother dropped into her chair, altogether softened, while Huntley spoke to her low and earnestly.

“Melmar is nothing to me,” said her eldest son, in the half-whispered forcible words which Cosmo did not hear, but in which his mother recognized the distinct resolution of a nature as firm as her own; “nothing at least except a chance of wealth and fortune—only a chance which can wait; but Norlaw is every thing—house, family, ancestors, every thing that makes me proud of my name. Norlaw and the Livingstones must never be disconnected while we can prevent it—and, mother, for Cosmo’s sake!”

“Eh, Huntley, God forgive me if I set more weight upon him than I should set!” said the Mistress, with tears; “no’ to your detriment, my own son; but look at the bairn! is he not his very image that’s gane?”

Not a single shadow of envy or displeasure crossed Huntley’s face; he stood looking at his young brother with a love almost as tender as their mother’s, with besides an unconscious swell of manhood and power in his own frame. He was the eldest brother, the head of the house, and the purest saint on earth could not have condemned the generous pride which rose in Huntley’s breast. It was not a weak effusion of sentimental self-sacrifice—his own hopes, his own heart, his own life, were strong with an individual identity in the young man’s nature. But the tender son of this house for the first time had made his own authoritative and masterly decision. To set aside his ambition and let it wait—to postpone fortune to labor—to do the first duty of a man on his own sole and unadvised responsibility—to provide for those of his own house, and set them above the anxieties of poverty. He was proud, when he thought of it, to feel the strength in his own arm, the vigor of his own step—but the pride was such as almost an angel might have shared.

When Huntley left the room, the Mistress called Cosmo to her side. She had resumed her seat by the corner window, and they could see him going out, disappearing behind the old castle walls, in the glory of the autumn sunset.

“Do you see him, Cosmo?” said the Mistress, with renewed tears, which this time were of mingled pride and tenderness; “I resisted, but I never wronged his thoughts. Do ye see your brother? Yonder he is, a young lad, proud, and bold, and masterful—he’s no’ like you—he has it in his heart to seek power, and riches, and honors, and to take pleasure in them—and he’s that daring that the chance of a battle would be more pleasant to Huntley than any thing in this world that was secure. Yet—do you hear me, laddie? he’s put them all aside, every ane, for the sake of this hame and name, and for you and me!”

And the color rose high upon the Mistress’s cheek in a flush of triumph; the necessity and blessing of women came upon her in a sudden flood—she could not be heroic herself, though she might covet the glory—but with a higher, tenderer, more delicious pride, she could rejoice and triumph in the courage of her boy. Her voice rose even in those restrained and moderate words of common speech as if in a song; there was an indescribable something in her tone which reminded one involuntarily of the old songs of Scripture, the old triumphant Hebrew parallelisms of Miriam and Deborah. She grasped Cosmo’s shoulder with an emphatic pressure, and pointed with the other hand to the retiring figure of Huntley, passing slowly and with a thoughtful step by the wall of the old castle. Cosmo leaned out beside her, catching a flush upon his delicate cheek from hers, but gazing upon the scene with a different eye. Insensibly the poetic glance of the boy left his brother, to dwell upon the other features of this picture before him. Those stern old walls with their windowless sockets, through which once the sunshine shone and the summer breezes entered to former generations of their name—that sweet evening glory of sunshine, pouring aslant in a lingering tender flood upon the world and the day, which it seemed sad to leave—that sunshine which never grew old—insensibly his own romance stole back into Cosmo’s mind. He forgot, with the inadvertence of his years, that it was not a romance agreeable to his mother, or that, even if it had been, she was not of a temper to bear the intrusion of other subjects when her mind was so fully occupied with concerns of her own.

“Mother, Huntley is right,” cried Cosmo; “Melmar can not be his if she is alive—it would not become him to seek it till he has sought her—and as Huntley can not seek her, for her sake and for my father’s, I will, though it should take the half of my life!”

Once more the Mistress’s face changed; a glance of fiery impatience flashed from her eyes, her cheek grew violently red, the tears dried as if by a spell, and she put Cosmo away hastily with the same arm which had held him.

“Get away to your plays, bairn—dinna trouble me!” cried the Mistress, with a harsh contempt, which was as strong as it was unjust; “to think I should open my heart to you that thinks of nothing but your romances and story books! Go! I’ve different things to think of—dinna trouble me!”

And she rose with a murmur of indignation and anger, and went hurriedly, with a flushed cheek, to seek her usual work, and take refuge in occupation. If the lost heiress had been her dearest friend, she would still have resented urgently the introduction of an intruder into her sudden burst of mother-pride. As it was, it overturned temper and patience entirely. She brushed past Cosmo with a hasty contempt, which humiliated and mortified the boy beyond expression. He did not attempt to justify himself—perhaps a kindred spark of resentment, and the bitterness with which youth appreciates injustice, helped to silence him—but when his mother resumed her seat and worked on hurriedly in a disdainful and angry silence, Cosmo withdrew out of the room and out of the house with a swelling heart. Too proud to betray how much he was wounded, he stole round behind the farm offices to his favorite perch among the ruins, where the lad brooded in mournful mood, sinking into the despairing despondency of his years and temperament, feeling himself misunderstood and unappreciated, and meditating a hundred melancholy heroisms. Mary of Melmar, so far, seemed as little propitious to Norlaw’s son as she had once been to Norlaw.