“Farewell? you don’t blame _me_, Cameron?” cried Cosmo, scarcely knowing what he said. “_Blame_ you--for what?” said the other, harshly, and with a momentary haughtiness; then he rose and laid his hand with an extreme and touching kindness, which was almost tender, upon Cosmo’s shoulder. “You’ve been like my youth to me, laddie,” said the Highlandman; “like a morning’s dew in the midst of drouth; when I say fare ye well I mean not to say that we’re parted; but I must not mint any more at the pathways of your life--mine is among the rocks, and in the teeth of the wind. I have no footing by nature among your primroses. That is why I say--not to-morrow in the daylight, and the eyes of strangers, but now when you and me and this night are by ourselves--fare ye well, laddie! We’re ever friends, but we’re no more comrades--that is what I mean.” “And that is hard, Cameron, to me,” said Cosmo, whose eyes were full. Cameron made no answer at all to the boy; he went to the door of the dim room with him, wrung his hand, and said, “Good night!” Then, while the lad went sadly up the noisy stair-case, the man turned back to his twilight apartment, bare and solitary, where there was nothing familiar and belonging to himself, save his pocket-book and passport upon the table, and Baptiste’s bill. He smiled as he took that up, and began to count out the money for its payment; vulgar, needful business, the very elements of daily necessity--these are the best immediate styptics for thrusts in the heart. Cosmo, to whom nothing had happened, went to his apartment perhaps more restlessly miserable than Cameron, thinking over all his friend’s words, and aggravating in imagination the sadness of their meaning. The lad did not care to read, much less to obey the call of Madame Roche’s pretty note, which bade him come and tell her further what his morning’s communication meant. For this night, at least, he was sick of Madame Roche, and every thing connected with her name. CHAPTER LVIII.