“That is neither your concern nor mine!” cried Cosmo, loftily. But, as Jaacob laughed and went on, the lad began to feel unaccountably aggravated, to lose his temper, and make angry answers, which made his discomfiture capital fun to the little giant. At length, Cosmo hurried away. It was the same day on which the Mistress paid her visit to Desirée, and Cosmo could not help feeling excited and curious about the issue of his mother’s invitation. Thoughts which made the lad blush came into his mind as he went slowly over Tyne, looking up at that high bank, from which the evening sunshine, chill, yet bright, was slowly disappearing--where the trees began to bud round the cottages, and where the white gable of the manse still crowned the peaceful summit--that manse where Katie Logan, with her elder-sister smile, was no longer mistress. Somehow, there occurred to him a wandering thought about Katie, who was away--he did not know where--and Huntley, who was at the ends of the earth. Huntley had not actually lost any thing, Cosmo said to himself, yet Huntley seemed disinherited and impoverished to the obstinate eyes of fancy. Cosmo could not have told, either, why he associated his brother with Katie Logan, now an orphan and absent, yet he did so involuntarily. He thought of Huntley and Katie, both poor, far separated, and perhaps never to meet again; he thought of Cameron in his sudden trouble; and then his thoughts glided off with a little bitterness, to that perverse woman’s love, which always seemed to cling to the wrong object. Madame Roche herself, perhaps, first of all, though the very fancy seemed somehow a wrong to his mother, Marie fretting peevishly for her French husband, Desirée giving her heart to Oswald Huntley. The lad turned upon his heel with a bitter impatience, and set off for a long walk in the opposite direction as these things glided into his mind. To be sure, he had nothing to do with it; but still it was all wrong--a distortion of nature--and it galled him in his thoughts. CHAPTER LXIII. The presence of Desirée made no small sensation in the house of Norlaw, which did not quite know what to make of her. The Mistress herself, after that first strange impulse of kin and kindness which prompted her to bring the young stranger home, relapsed into her usual ways, and did not conceal from either son or servant that she expected to be “fashed” by the little Frenchwoman; while Marget, rather displeased that so important a step should be taken without her sanction, and mightily curious to know the reason, was highly impatient at first of Desirée’s name and nation, and discontented with her presence here.