And she turned sharply toward the door.

Frank Headley was naturally a shy man:  but extreme need sometimes bestows on shyness a miraculous readiness—­(else why, in the long run, do the shy men win the best wives? which is a fact, and may be proved by statistics, at least as well as anything else can) so he quietly stepped to Valencia’s side, and said in a low voice—­

“You cannot avow the refusal half as proudly as I shall avow the request, if you will but wait till your sister’s return.  Both are unnecessary, I think:  but it will only be an honour to me to confess, that, poor curate as I am—­”

“Hush!” and Valencia walked quietly up to the table, and began turning over the leaves of a book, to gain time for her softened heart and puzzled brain.

In five minutes Frank was beside her again.  The book was Tennyson’s “Princess.”  She had wandered—­who can tell why?—­to that last exquisite scene, which all know; and as Valencia read, Frank quietly laid a finger on the book, and arrested her eyes at last—­

  “If you be, what I think you, some sweet dream. 
  Stoop down, and seem to kiss me ere I die!”

Valencia shut the book up hurriedly and angrily.  A moment after she had made up her mind what to do, and with the slightest gesture in the world, motioned Frank proudly and coldly to follow her back into the window.  Had she been a country girl, she would have avoided the ugly matter; but she was a woman of the world enough to see that she must, for her own sake and his, talk it out reasonably.

“What do you mean, Mr. Headley?  I must ask!  You told me just now that you had no intention of making love to me.”

“I told you the truth,” said he, in his quiet impassive voice.  “I fixed on these lines as a pis aller; and they have done all and more than I wished, by bringing you back here for at least a moment.”

“And do you suppose—­you speak like a rational man, therefore, I must treat you as one—­that I can grant your request?”

“Why not?  It is an uncommon one.  If I have guessed your character aright, you are able to do uncommon things.  Had I thought you enslaved by etiquette, and by the fear of a world which you can make bow at your feet if you will, I should not have asked you.  But,”—­and here his voice took a tone of deepest earnestness—­“grant it—­only grant it, and you shall never repent it.  Never, never, never will I cast one shadow over a light which has been so glorious, so life-giving; which I watched with delight, and yet lose without regret.  Go your way, and God be with you!  I go mine; grant me but a fortnight’s happiness, and then, let what will come!”

He had conquered.  The quiet earnestness of the voice, the child-like simplicity of the manner, of which every word conveyed the most delicate flattery—­yet, she could see, without intending to flatter, without an after-thought—­all these had won the impulsive Irish nature.  For all the dukes and marquises in Belgravia she would not have done it; for they would have meant more than they said, even when they spoke more clumsily:  but for the plain country curate she hesitated, and asked herself, “What shall I give him?”