“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.

“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.

CHAPTER XXI.

NATURE’S MELODRAMA.

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.