And she rose with a murmur of indignation and anger, and went hurriedly, with a flushed cheek, to seek her usual work, and take refuge in occupation. If the lost heiress had been her dearest friend, she would still have resented urgently the introduction of an intruder into her sudden burst of mother-pride. As it was, it overturned temper and patience entirely. She brushed past Cosmo with a hasty contempt, which humiliated and mortified the boy beyond expression. He did not attempt to justify himself--perhaps a kindred spark of resentment, and the bitterness with which youth appreciates injustice, helped to silence him--but when his mother resumed her seat and worked on hurriedly in a disdainful and angry silence, Cosmo withdrew out of the room and out of the house with a swelling heart. Too proud to betray how much he was wounded, he stole round behind the farm offices to his favorite perch among the ruins, where the lad brooded in mournful mood, sinking into the despairing despondency of his years and temperament, feeling himself misunderstood and unappreciated, and meditating a hundred melancholy heroisms. Mary of Melmar, so far, seemed as little propitious to Norlaw’s son as she had once been to Norlaw. CHAPTER XXII. “Go wherever you like, bairns, or travel straight on, if you please--I canna see a step before me, for my part--it’s you and no’ me that must take the lead,” said the Mistress, with a heavy sigh. These words were said as the little party, Huntley, Patrick and herself, were left standing by a little pile of luggage, in the dusk of a harvest evening, in front of the coach office on the Edinburgh pavement. They were on their way to Liverpool, from which place Huntley was to sail in an emigrant ship for Port Philip. Princes Street was full of the open-air and street-loving crowd which gives to that splendid promenade, on summer nights, so much of a continental aspect. The dusk of the twilight fell softly in the valley which lay behind, the lights in the high houses on the other side hung softly midway in the air, the voices of the passengers, and sounds of the city, though doubtless many of these were sad enough, mingled in the soft-shadowed air to a harmonious hum of pleasant sound, which echoed with a mocking gayety into the heavy heart of the mother who was about to part with her boys. She was bewildered for the moment with her journey, with the unknown place and unusual animation around her, and it was only very slowly and by degrees that her mind regained its usual self-possession. She stood gazing blankly round her, while the boys made arrangements about their superfluous packages, which were to be left at the coach office, and finally came up to her, carrying between them the little trunk which contained the necessaries for their journey. Cabs were not in those days, and the Mistress would have been horrified into perfect self-possession by the preposterous idea of “a noddy.” When they were thus far ready, she