Pen-y-gwryd?" cried both men at once. "Yes. Major Campbell, I wish to show it to you." Valencia's tone and manner was significant enough to make Claude Mellot bid them both good-night. When he had shut the door behind him, Valencia put the letter into the Major's hand. He was too much absorbed in it to look up at her; but if he had done so, he would have been startled by the fearful capacity of passion which changed, for the moment, that gay Queen Whims into a terrible Roxana, as she stood, leaning against the mantel-piece, but drawn up to her full height, her lips tight shut, eyes which gazed through and through him in awful scrutiny, holding her very breath, while a nervous clutching of the little hand said, "If you have tampered with my sister's heart, better for you that you were dead!" He read it through, once, twice, with livid face; then dashed it on the floor. "Fool !—cur !—liar !—she is as pure as God's sunlight." "You need not tell me that," said Valencia, through her closed teeth. "Fool!-fool!" And then, in a moment, his voice changed from indignation to the bitterest self-reproach. "And fool I ; thrice fool! Who am I, to rail on him? Oh God! what have I done?" And he covered his face with his hands. "What have you done?" literally shrieked Valencia. "Nothing that you or man can blame, Miss St. Just! Can you dream that, sinful as I am, I could ever harbour a thought toward her of which I should be ashamed before the angels of God?" He looked up as he spoke, with an utter humility and an intense honesty, which unnerved her at once. "Oh, my Saint Père !" and she held out both her hands. 'Forgive me, if-only for a moment—” "I am not your Saint Père, nor any one's! I am a poor, weak, conceited, miserable man, who by his accursed impertinence has broken the heart of the being whom he loves best on earth." Valencia started but ere she could ask for an explanation, he rejoined wildly— "How is she? Tell me only that, this once! Has it killed her! Does she hate him?" "Adores him more than ever. Oh, Major Campbell! it is too piteous, too piteous." He covered his face with his hands, shuddering. "Thank God! yes, thank God! So it should be. Let her love him to the last, and win her martyr's crown! Now, Valencia St. Just sit down, if but for five minutes; and listen, once for all, to the last words, perhaps, you will ever hear me speak; unless she wants you?" "No, no! Tell me all, Saint Père !" said Valencia, "for I am walking in a dream—a double dream! as the new thought of Headley, and that walk, came over her. "Tell me all at once, while I have wits left to comprehend." "Miss St. Just," said he, in a clear calm voice. "It is fit, for her honour and for mine, that you should know all. The first day that I ever saw your sister, I loved her; as a man loves who can never cease to love, or love a second time. I was a raw, awkward Scotchman then, and she used to laugh at me. Why not? I kept my secret, and determined to become a man at whom no one would wish to laugh. I was in the Company's service then. You recollect her jesting once about the Indian army, and my commanding black people, and saying that the Line only was fit for some girl's jest?" "I never forgot it. I threw up all my prospects, and went into the Line. Whether I won honour there or not, I need not tell you. I came back to England years after, not unworthy, as I fancied, to look your sister in the face as an equal. I found her married." He paused a little, and then went on, in a quiet, business-like tone. "Good. Her choice was sure to be a worthy one, and that was enough for me. You need not doubt that I kept my secret then more sacredly than ever. I returned to India, and tried to die. I dared not kill myself, for I was a soldier and a Christian, and belonged to God and my Queen. The Sikhs would not kill me, do what I would to help them. Then I threw myself into science, that I might stifle passion; and I stifled it. I fancied myself cured, and I was cured; and I returned to England again. I loved your brother for her sake; I loved you at first for her sake, then for your own. But I presumed upon my cure; 1 accepted your brother's invitation; I caught at the opportunity of seeing her again-happy-as I fancied; and of proving to myself my own soundness. I considered myself a sort of Melchisedek, neither young nor old, without passions, without purpose on earth-a fakeer who had licence to do and to dare what others might not. But I kept my secret proudly inviolate. I do not believe at this moment she dreams that-Do you?" "She does not." "Thank God! I was a most conceited fool, puffed up with spiritual pride, tempting God needlessly. I went, I saw her. Heaven is my witness, that as far as passion goes, my heart is as pure as yours: but I found that I still cared more for her than for any being on earth: and I found too the sort of man upon whom God forgive me! I must not talk of that I despised him, hated him, pretended to teach him his duty, by behaving better to her than he did-the spiritual coxcomb that I was! What business had I with it? Why not have left all to God and her good sense? The devil tempted me to-day, in the shape of an angel of courtesy and chivalry; and here the end is come. I must find that man, Miss St. Just, if I travel the world in search of him. I must ask his pardon frankly, humbly, for my impertinence. Perhaps so I may bring him back to her, and not die with a curse on my head for having parted those whom God has joined. And then to the old fighting-trade once more—the only one, I believe, I really understand; and see whether a Russian bullet will not fly straighter than a clumsy Sikh's." Valencia listened, awe-stricken; and all the more so because this was spoken in a calm, half-abstracted voice, without a note of feeling, save where he alluded to his own mistakes. When it was over, she rose without a word, and took both his hands in her own, sobbing bitterly. "You forgive me, then, all the misery which I have caused?" "Do not talk so! Only forgive me having fancied for one moment that you were anything but what you are, an angel out of heaven." Campbell hung down his head. "Angel, truly! Azraël, the angel of death, then. Go to her now-go, and leave a humbled penitent man alone with God." Oh, my Saint Père !" cried she, bursting into tears. "This is too wretched-all a horrid dream-and when, too-when I had been counting on telling you something so different!—I cannot now, I have not the heart." 'What, more misery?" "Oh no! no! no! You will know all to-morrow. Ask Scoutbush." "I shall be gone in search of that man long before Scoutbush is awake." "Impossible! you do not know whither he is gone." "If I employ every detective in Bow Street, I will find him.” 'Wait, only wait, till the post comes in to-morrow. He will surely write, if not to her,—wretch that he is!—at least to some of us. "If he be alive. No. I must go up to Pen-y-gwryd, where he was last seen, and find out what I can." 'They will be all in bed at this hour of the night; and if—if anything has happened, it will be over by now," added she with a shudder "God forgive me! It will indeed: but he may write-perhaps to me. He is no coward, I believe; and he may send me a challenge. Yes, I will wait for the post." "Shall you accept it if he does?” Major Campbell smiled sadly. 66 No, Miss St. Just; you may set your mind at rest upon that point. I have done quite enough harm already to your family. Now, good-bye! I will wait for the post to-morrow: do you go to your sister." Valencia went, utterly bewildered. She had forgotten Frank, but Frank had not forgotten her. He had hurried to his room; lay till morning, sleepless with delight, and pouring out his pure spirit in thanks for this great and unexpected blessing. A new life had begun for him, even in the jaws of death. He would still go to the East. It seemed easy to him to go there in search of a grave; how much more now, when he felt so full of magic life, that fever, cholera, the chances of war, could not harm him! After this proof of God's love, how could he doubt, how fear? Little he thought that, three doors off from him, Valencia was sitting up the whole night through, vainly trying to quiet Lucia, who refused to undress, and paced up and down her room, hour after hour in wild misery, which I have no skill to detail. WHAT, then, had become of Elsley? And whence had he written the fatal letter? He had hurried up the high road for half an hour and more, till the valley on the left sloped upward more rapidly, in dark dreary bogs, the moonlight shining on their runnels; while the mountain on his right sloped downwards more rapidly in dark dreary down, strewn with rocks which stood out black against the sky. He was nearing the head of the watershed; soon he saw slate roofs glittering in the moonlight, and found himself at the little inn of Pen-y-gwryd, at the meeting of the three great valleys, the central heart of the mountains. And a genial, jovial little heart it is, and an honest, kindly little heart too, with warm life-blood within. So it looked that night, with every window red with comfortable light, and a long stream of glare pouring across the road from the open door, gilding the fir-tree tops in front: but its geniality only made him shudder. He had been there more than once, and knew the place and the people; and knew, too, that of all people in the world, they were the least like him. He hurried past the doorway, and caught one glimpse of the bright kitchen. A sudden thought struck him. He would go in and write his letter there. But not yet he could not go in yet; for through the open door came some sweet Welsh air, so sweet, that even he paused to listen. Men were singing in three parts, in that rich metallic temper of voice, and that perfect time and tune, which is the one gift still left to that strange Cymry race, worn out with the long burden of so many thousand years. He knew the air; it was "The Rising of the Lark." Heavens! what a bitter contrast to his own thoughts! But he stood rooted, as if spellbound, to hear it to the end. The lark's upward flight was over; and Elsley heard him come quivering down from heaven's gate, fluttering, sinking, trilling self-complacently, springing aloft in one bar, only to sink lower in the next, and call more softly to his brooding mate below; till, worn out with his ecstacy, he murmured one last sigh of joy, and sank into the nest. The picture flashed through Elsley's brain as swiftly as the notes did through his ears. He breathed more freely when it vanished with the sounds. He strode hastily in, and down the little passage to the kitchen. It was a low room, ceiled with dark beams, from which hung bacon and fishing-rods, harness and drying stockings, and all the miscellanea of a fishing inn kept by a farmer, and beneath it the usual happy, hearty, honest group. There was Harry Owen, bland and stalwart, his baby in his arms, smiling upon the world in general; old Mrs. Pritchard, bending over the fire, putting the last touch to one of those miraculous soufflets, compact of clouds and nectar, which transport alike palate and fancy, at the first mouthful, from Snowdon to Belgrave Square. A sturdy fair-haired Saxon Gourbannelig sat with his back to the door, and two of the beautiful children on his knee, their long locks flowing over the elbows of his shooting jacket, as, with both arms round them, he made Punch for them with his handkerchief and his fingers, and chattered to them in English, while they chattered in Welsh. By him sat another Englishman, to whom the three tuneful Snowdon guides, their music-score upon their knees, sat listening approvingly, as he rolled out, with voice as of a jolly blackbird, or jollier monk of old, the good old Wessex song : "My dog he has his master s nose, To smell a knave through silken hose; |