Living at the utmost strain of her character, Campbell gone, her brother useless, and Lucia and the children depending utterly on her, there was but one to whom she could look for comfort while she needed it most utterly; and happy for her and for her lover that she could go to him.

“Poor Lucia! thank God that I have some one who will never treat me so! who will lift me up and shield me, instead of crushing me!—­dear creature!—­Oh that I may find him!” And her heart went out after Frank with a gush of tenderness which she had never felt before.

“Is this, then, love?” she asked herself; and she found time to slip into her own room for a moment and arrange her dishevelled hair, ere she entered the breakfast-room.

Frank was there, luckily alone, pacing nervously up and down.  He hurried up to her, caught both her hands in his, and gazed into her wan and haggard face with the intensest tenderness and anxiety.

Valencia’s eyes looked into the depths of his, passive and confiding, till they failed before the keenness of his gaze, and swam in glittering mist.

“Ah!” thought she; “sorrow is a light price to pay for the feeling of being so loved by such a man!”

“You are tired,—­ill?  What a night you must have had!  Mellot has told me all.”

“Oh, my poor sister!” and wildly she poured out to Frank her wrath against Elsley, her inability to comfort Lucia, and all the misery and confusion of the past night.

“This is a sad dawning for the day of my triumph!” thought Frank, who longed to pour out his heart to her on a thousand very different matters:  but he was content; it was enough for him that she could tell him all, and confide in him; a truer sign of affection than any selfish love-making; and he asked, and answered, with such tenderness and thoughtfulness for poor Lucia, with such a deep comprehension of Elsley’s character, pitying while he blamed, that he won his reward at last.

“Oh! it would he intolerable, if I had not through it all the thought” and blushing crimson, her head drooped on her bosom.  She seemed ready to drop with exhaustion.

“Sit down, sit down, or you will fall!” said Frank, leading her to a chair; and as he led her, he whispered with fluttering heart, new to its own happiness, and longing to make assurance sure—­“What thought?”

She was silent still; but he felt her hand tremble in his.

“The thought of me?”

She looked up in his face; how beautiful!  And in another moment, neither knew how, she was clasped to his bosom.

He covered her face, her hair with kisses:  she did not move; from that moment she felt that he was her husband.

“Oh, guide me! counsel me! pray for me!” sobbed she.  “I am all alone, and my poor sister, she is going mad, I think, and I have no one to trust but you; and you—­you will leave me to go to those dreadful wars; and then, what will become of me?  Oh, stay! only a few days!” and holding him convulsively, she answered his kisses with her own.