“I never said I knew any lady,” said the Mistress, testily. “I kent of one that was lost mony a year ago. Na, na, this is naebody belonging to _her_. She was a fair, soft woman that, with blue e’en, and taller than me; but this is a bit elf of a thing, dark and little. I canna tell what put it into my head for a moment, for Melmar was the last house in the world to look for a bairn’s of _hers_ in; but folk canna help nonsense thoughts. Cosmo, you see, he’s a very fanciful laddie, as indeed is no’ to be wondered at, and he wrote me hame word about somebody he had seen--and then hearing of this bairn asking questions about me; but it was just havers, as I kent from the first--she is no more like her than she’s like you or me. But I’m sorry about the lad. Naething but ill and mischief can come of the like, so far as I’ve seen. If he’s deluding the bairn, he’s a villain, Katie, and if she’s leading him on--and ane can never tell what snares are in these Frenchwomen from their very cradle--I’m sorry for Melmar and his wife, though they’re no friends to me.” “I think Oswald Huntley ought to be very well able to take care of himself,” repeated Katie--“and to know French ways, too. I like Desirée, and I don’t like him. I hope she will not have any thing to say to him. When is Cosmo coming home?” The Mistress, however, looked a little troubled about Cosmo. She did not answer readily. “He’s a fanciful bairn,” she said, half fondly, half angrily--“as indeed what else can you expect? He’s ane of the real auld Livingstones of Norlaw--aye some grand wild plan in his head for other folks, and no’ that care for himself that might be meet. He would have been a knight like what used to be in the ballads in my young days, if he hadna lived ower late for that.”