“Faith, he needn’t trouble you; and I shall take very good care—­I wonder when the supper is coming—­that neither he nor any else troubles me.  But really,” said he, in his natural voice, and with some feeling, “I was ashamed to go away and leave him there.  He would have died if we had.  He worked day and night.  Talk of saints and martyrs!  Campbell himself said he was an idler by the side of him.”

“Oh!  I hope Major Campbell has not over-exerted himself!”

“He? nothing hurts him.  He’s as hard as his own sword.  But the poor curate worked on till he got the cholera himself.  He always expected it, longed for it; Campbell said—­wanted to die.  Some love affair, I suppose, poor fellow?—­and a terrible bout he had for eight-and-forty hours.  Thurnall thought him gone again and again; but he pulled the poor fellow through, after all, and we got some one (that is, Campbell did) to take his duty; and brought him away, after a good deal of persuasion; for he would not move as long as there was a fresh case in the town; that is why we never wrote.  We did not know till the last hour when we should start; and we expected to be with you in two days, and give you a pleasant surprise.  He was half dead when we got him on board; but the week’s sea-air helped him through; so I must not grumble at these northerly breezes.  ‘It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good,’ they say!”

Valencia heard all this as in a dream; and watched her chattering brother with a stupefied air.  She comprehended all now; and bitterly she blamed herself.  He had really loved her, then; set himself manfully to die at his post, that he might forget her in a better world.  How shamefully she had trifled with that noble heart!  How should she ever meet—­how have courage to look him in the face?  And not love, or anything like love, but sacred pity and self-abasement filled her heart, as his fair, delicate face rose up before her, all wan and shrunken, with sad upbraiding eyes; and round it such a halo, pure and pale, as crowns, in some old German picture, a martyr’s head.

“He has had the cholera! he has been actually dying?” asked she at last, with that strange wish to hear over again bad news, which one knows too well already.

“Of course he has.  Why, you are not going away, Valencia?  You need not be afraid of infection.  Campbell, and Thurnall, too, says that’s all nonsense; and they must know, having seen it so often.  Here comes Bowie at last with supper!”

“Has Mr. Headley had anything to eat?” asked Valencia, who longed to run away to her own room, but dared not.

“He is eating now like any ged, ma’am; and Major Campbell’s making him eat too.”

“He must be very ill,” thought she, “for mon Saint Pere never to have come near us yet:”  and then she thought with terror that her Saint Pere might have guessed the truth, and be angry with her.  And yet she trusted in Frank’s secrecy.  He would not betray her.