Cosmo was a little puzzled; he did not know what answer to make--he could not quite understand, himself, this entirely new aspect of his friend’s character. “Cameron is a very good fellow,” he said, with perplexity; but Cosmo did not himself perceive how, to prove himself a good fellow, it was needful for Cameron to pay such close reverential regard to the invalid on her sofa, whom he seemed now endeavoring to amuse by an account of their travels. The reserved and grave Highlander warmed as he spoke. He was talking of Venice on her seas, and Rome on her hills, while Marie leaned back on her pillows, with a faint flush upon her delicate cheek, following his narrative with little assenting gestures of her thin white hand, and motions of her head. She was not beautiful like her mother, but she was so fragile, so tender, so delicate, with a shadowy white vail on her head like a cap, fastened with a soft pink ribbon, which somehow made her invalid delicacy of complexion all the more noticeable, that Cosmo could not help smiling and wondering at the contrast between her and the black, dark, strong-featured face which bent towards her. No--Cameron had no sick sister--perhaps the grave undemonstrative student might even have smiled at Madame Roche’s pretty French sentiment about her wounded dove; yet Cameron, who knew nothing about women, and had confessed to Cosmo long ago how little of the universal benevolence of love he found himself capable of, was exerting himself entirely out of his usual fashion, with an awkward earnestness of sympathy which touched Cosmo’s heart, for the amusement of the poor sick Marie. “We, too, have wandered far, but not where you have been,” said Madame Roche. “We do not know your beautiful Rome and Venice--we know only the wilderness, I and my Marie. Ah, you would not suppose it, to find us safe in St. Ouen; but we have been at--what do you call it?--the other side of the world--down, down below here, where summer comes at Christmas--ah! in the Antipodes.” “And I would we were there now, mamma,” said Marie, with a sigh. “Ah, my poor child!--yes, we were there, gentlemen,” said Madame Roche. “We have been great travelers--we have been in America--we were savages for a long time--we were lost to all the world; no one knew of us--they forgot me in my country altogether; and even my poor Jean--they scarce remembered _him_ in St. Ouen. When we came back, we were like people who drop from the skies. Ah, it was strange! His father and his friends were dead, and me--it was never but a place of strangers to me--this town. I have not been in my country--not for twenty years; yet I sometimes think I should wish to look at it ere I die, but for Marie.” “But the change might be of use to her health,” said Cameron, eagerly. “It often is so. Motion, and air, and novelty, of themselves do a great deal. Should you not try?”