And Cosmo hurried on through the narrow paths to Melmar, his heart a-flame with a young man’s resentment, and impatience, and love. He scarcely could tell what it was which excited him so entirely. Not, certainly, the vagabond Pierrot, or any fears for Marie; not even the displeasure of his mother. He would not acknowledge to himself the eager, jealous fears which hurried him through those flowery bye-ways where the blossoms of the hawthorn had fallen in showers like summer snow, and the wild roses were rich in the hedgerows. Huntley!--why did he fear Huntley? What was the impulse of unfraternal impatience which made him turn with indignant offense from every thought of his brother? Had he put it into words, he would have despised himself; but he only rushed on in silence through the silent Sabbath fields and bye-ways to the house of Madame Roche. It is early, early yet, and there is still no church bell ringing through the silence of the skies to rouse the farms and cottages. The whole bright summer world was as silent as a dream--the corn growing, the flowers opening, the sun shining, without a whisper to tell that dutiful Nature carried on her pious work through all the day of rest. The Tyne ran softly beneath his banks, the Kelpie rushed foaming white down its little ravine, and all the cool burns from among the trees dropped down into Tyne with a sound like silver bells. Something white shone upon the path on the very spot where Desirée once lay, proud and desolate, in the chill of the winter night, brooding over false friendship and pretended love. Desirée now is sitting on the same stone, musing once more in her maiden meditation. The universal human trouble broods even on these thoughts--not heavily--only like the shadow that flits along the trees of Tyne--a something ruffling the white woman’s forehead, which is more serious than the girl’s was, and disquieting the depths of those eyes which Cosmo Livingstone had called stars. Stars do not mist themselves with tender dew about the perversities of human kind as these eyes do; yet let nobody suppose that these sweet drops, lingering bright within the young eyelids, should be called tears. Tears! words have so many meanings in this world! it is all the same syllable that describes the child’s passion, the honey-dew of youth, and that heavy rain of grief which is able sometimes to blot out both the earth and the skies.