And once more he glanced round the room, and at her vacant sofa, with a tender reverence and respect which touched Cosmo to the heart, and filled the lad with understanding at once and pity. Could he suppose that it was hearing of this that aggravated Marie’s headache? could he delude himself with the thought that she was moved by the prospect of his departure? Poor Cameron! Madame Roche was looking at him too with a strange anxiety, trying to read his softened and eloquent face. The old lady paused with an embarrassed and hesitating perplexity, looking from Cosmo to Cameron, from Cameron back again to Cosmo. The lad thought she asked an explanation from him with her eyes, but Cosmo had no explanation to give. “My friend,” said Madame Roche, at last, trying to recover her smile, but speaking with an evident distress which she endeavored in vain to conceal--“you must not say _Mademoiselle_ Marie. The people do so, for they have known her as a girl; but they all know her story, poor child! I fancied you must have heard it from Baptiste or Margot, who love to talk. Ah! have they been so prudent?--it is strange.” Madame Roche paused again, as if to take breath. Cosmo instinctively and silently moved his chair further away, and only looked on, a deeply-moved spectator, not an actor in the scene. Cameron did not say a word, but he grasped the little marble table with a hand as cold as itself, and looked at Madame Roche with the face of a man whose tongue clove to his mouth, and who could not have spoken for his life. She, trembling a little, afraid to show her emotion, half frightened at the look of the person she addressed, proceeded, after her pause, with a rapid, interrupted voice. “My poor, tender Marie--poor child!” said the mother. “Alas! she is no more mademoiselle--she is married; she was married years ago, when she was too young. Ah, it has wrung my heart!” cried the old lady, speaking more freely when her great announcement was made; “for her husband loves her no longer; yet my poor child would seek him over the world if she might. Strange--strange, is it not? that there should be one most dear to her who does not love Marie?”