“Lucia, what is it?  Speak to me, Lucia!”

She pointed faintly to a letter on the floor—­Valencia caught it up—­ Lucia made a gesture as if to stop her.

“No, you must not read it.  Too dreadful!”

But Valencia read it; while Lucia covered her face in her hands, and uttered a long, low, shuddering moan of bitter agony.

Valencia read, with flashing eyes and bursting brow.  It was a hideous letter.  The words of a man trying to supply the place of strength by virulence.  A hideous letter, unfit to be written here.

“Valencia!  Valencia!  It is false—­a mistake—­he is dreaming.  You know it is false!  You will not leave me too!”

Valencia dashed it on the ground, clasped her sister in her arms, and covered her head with kisses.

“My Lucia!  My own sweet good sister!  Base, cowardly,” sobbed she, in her rage; while Lucia’s agony began to find a vent in words, and she moaned on—­

“What have I done?  All that flower, that horrid flower:  but who would have dreamed—­and Major Campbell, too, of all men upon earth!  Valencia, it is some horrid delusion of the devil.  Why, he was there all the while—­and you too.  Could he think that I should before his very face?  What must he fancy me?  Oh, it is a delusion of the devil, and nothing else!”

“He is a wretch!  I will take the letter to my brother; he shall right you!”

“Ah no! no! never!  Let me tear it to atoms—­hide it!  It is all a mistake!  He did not mean it!  He will recollect himself to-morrow and come back.”

“Let him come back if he dare!” cried Valencia, in a tone which said, “I could kill him with my own hands!”

“Oh, he will come back!  He cannot have the heart to leave his poor little Lucia.  Oh, cruel, cowardly, not to have said one word—­not one word to explain all—­but it was all my fault, my wicked, odious temper; and after I had seen how vexed he was, too!—­Oh, Elsley, Elsley, come back, only come back, and I will beg your pardon on my knees! anything?  Scold me, beat me, if you will!  I deserve it all!  Only come back, and let me see your face, and hear your voice, instead of leaving me here all alone, and the poor children too!  Oh, what shall I say to them to-morrow, when they wake and find no father!”

Valencia’s indignation had no words.  She could only sit on the bed, with Lucia in her arms, looking defiance at all the world above that fair head which one moment dropped on her bosom, and the next gazed up into her face in pitiful child-like pleading.

“Oh, if I but knew where he was gone!  If I could but find him!  One word —­one word would set all right!  It always did, Valencia, always!  He was so kind, so dear in a moment, when I put away my naughty, naughty temper, and smiled in his face like a good wife.  Wicked creature that I was! and this is my punishment.  Oh, Elsley, one word, one word!  I must find him if I went barefoot over the mountains—­I must go, I must—­”