“Thank God that she did not see that I was going!  One more pang on earth spared!” said Campbell to himself.

Valencia hurried to Lucia’s door.  She was holding it ajar and looking out with pale face, and wild hungry eyes.—­“A letter?  Don’t be silent or I shall go mad!  Tell me the worst!  Is he alive?”

“Yes.”

She gasped, and staggered against the door-post.

“Where?  Why does he not come back to me?” asked she, in a confused, abstracted way.

It was best to tell the truth, and have it over.

“He has gone to London, Lucia.  He will think over it all there, and be sorry for it, and then all will be well again.”

But Lucia did not hear the end of that sentence.  Murmuring to herself, “To London!  To London!” she hurried back into the room.

“Clara!  Clara! have the children had their breakfast?”

“Yes, ma’am!” says Clara, appearing from the inner room.

“Then help me to pack up, quick!  Your master is gone to London on business; and we are to follow him immediately.”

And she began bustling about the room.

“My dearest Lucia, you are not fit to travel now!”

“I shall die if I stay here; die if I do nothing!  I must find him!” whispered she.  “Don’t speak loud, or Clara will hear.  I can find him, and nobody can but me!  Why don’t you help me to pack, Valencia?”

“My dearest! but what will Scoutbush say when he comes home, and finds you gone?”

“What right has he to interfere?  I am Elsley’s wife, am I not? and may follow my husband if I like:”  and she went on desperately collecting, not her own things, but Elsley’s.

Valencia watched her with tear-brimming eyes; collecting all his papers, counting over his clothes, murmuring to herself that he would want this and that in London.  Her sanity seemed failing her, under the fixed idea that she had only to see him, and set all right with, a word.

“I will go and get you some breakfast,” said she at last.

“I want none.  I am too busy to eat.  Why don’t you help me?”

Valencia had not the heart to help, believing, as she did, that Lucia’s journey would be as bootless as it would be dangerous to her health.

“I will bring you some breakfast, and you must try; then I will help to pack:”  and utterly bewildered she went out; and the thought uppermost in her mind was,—­“Oh, that I could find Frank Headley?”

Happy was it for Frank’s love, paradoxical as it may seem, that it had conquered just at that moment of terrible distress.  Valencia’s acceptance of him had been hasty, founded rather on sentiment and admiration than on deep affection; and her feeling might have faltered, waned, died away in self-distrust of its own reality, if giddy amusement, if mere easy happiness, had followed it.  But now the fire of affliction was branding in the thought of him upon her softened heart.