Major Campbell sighed, and walked on a few moments in silence, then,—­

“Pardon, Miss St. Just; I asked a rude question, and I am sorry for it.”

“Pardon you, my dear Saint Pere?” cried she, almost catching at his hand.  “Never!  I must either believe you infallible, or hate you eternally.  It is I that was naughty; I always am; but you will forgive Queen Whims?”

“Who could help it?” said the Major, in a sad, sweet tone.  “But here is the postman.  May I open my letters?”

“You may do as you like, now you have forgiven me.  Why, what is it, mon Saint Pere?”

A sudden shock of horror had passed over the Major’s face, as he read his letter:  but it had soon subsided into stately calm.

“A gallant officer, whom we and all the world knew well, is dead of cholera, at his post, where a man should die....  And, my dear Miss St. Just, we are going to the Crimea.”

“We?—­you?”

“Yes.  The expedition will really sail, I find.”

“But not you?”

“I shall offer my services.  My leave of absence will, in any case, end on the first of September; and even if it did not, my health is quite enough restored to enable me to walk up to a cannon’s mouth.”

“Ah, mon Saint Pere, what words are these?”

“The words of an old soldier, Queen Whims, who has been so long at his trade that he has got to take a strange pleasure in it.”

“In killing?”

“No; only in the chance of——.  But I will not cast an unnecessary shadow over your bright soul.  There will be shadows enough over it soon, without my help.”

“What do you mean?”

“That you, and thousands more as delicate, if not as fair as you, will see, ere long, what the realities of human life are; and in a way of which you have never dreamed.”

And he murmured, half to himself, the words of the prophet,—­“’Thou saidst, I shall sit as a lady for ever:  but these two things shall come upon thee in one day, widowhood and the loss of children.  They shall even come upon thee,’—­No! not in their fulness!  There are noble elements beneath the crust, which will come out all the purer from the fire; and we shall have heroes and heroines rising up among us as of old, sincere and earnest, ready to face their work, and to do it, and to call all things by their right names once more; and Queen Whims herself will become what Queen Whims might be!”

Valencia was awed, as well she might have been; for there was a very deep sadness about Campbell’s voice.

“You think there will be def—­disasters?” said she, at last.

“How can I tell?  That we are what we always were, I doubt not.  Scoutbush will fight as merrily as I. But we owe the penalty of many sins, and we shall pay it.”

It would be as unfair, perhaps, as easy, to make Major Campbell a prophet after the fact, by attributing to him any distinct expectation of those mistakes which have been but too notorious since.  Much of the sadness in his tone may have been due to his habitual melancholy; his strong belief that the world was deeply diseased, and that some terrible purgation would surely come, when it was needed.  But it is difficult, again, to conceive that those errors were altogether unforeseen by many an officer of Campbell’s experience and thoughtfulness.