“But, you naughty, hypocritical Saint Pere, you write poetry yourself, and beautifully.”

“Yes, as I smoke my cigar, to comfort my poor rheumatic old soul.  But if I lived only to write poetry, I should think myself as wise as if I lived only to smoke tobacco.”

Valencia’s eyes could not help glancing at Elsley, who had wandered away to the neighbouring brook, and was gazing with all his eyes upon a ferny rock, having left Lucia to help Claude with his photographing.

Frank saw her look, and read its meaning; and answered her thoughts, perhaps too hastily.

“And what a really well-read and agreeable man he is, all the while!  What a mine of quaint learning, and beautiful old legend!—­If he would but bring it into the common stock for every one’s amusement, instead of hoarding it up for himself!” “Why, what else does he do but bring it into the common stock, when he publishes a book which every one can read!” said Valencia, half out of the spirit of contradiction.

“And few understand,” said Headley, quietly.

“You are very unjust; he is a very discerning and agreeable person, and I shall go and talk to him.”  And away went Valencia to Elsley, somewhat cross.  Woman-like, she allowed, for the sake of her sister’s honour, no one but herself to depreciate Vavasour, and chose to think it impertinent on Headley’s part.

Headley began quietly talking to Major Campbell about botany, while Valencia, a little ashamed of herself all the while, took her revenge on Elsley by scolding him for his unsocial ways, in the very terms which Headley had been using.

At last Claude, having finished his photographing, departed downward to get some new view from the road below, and Lucia returned to the rest of the party.  Valencia joined them at once, bringing up Elsley, who was not in the best of humours after her diatribes; and the whole party wandered about the woodland, and scrambled down beside the torrent beds.

At last they came to a point where they could descend no further; for the stream, falling over a cliff, had worn itself a narrow chasm in the rock, and thundered down it into a deep narrow pool.

Lucia, who was basking in the sunshine and the flowers as simple as a child, would needs peep over the brink, and made Elsley hold her while she looked down.  A quiet happiness, as of old recollections, came into her eyes, as she watched the sparkling and foaming water—­

  “And beauty, born of murmuring sound,
  Did pass into her face.”

Campbell started.  The Lucia of seven years ago seemed to bloom out again in that pale face and wrinkled forehead; and a smile came over his face, too, as he looked.

“Just like the dear old waterfall at Kilanbaggan.  You recollect it, Major Campbell?”

Elsley always disliked recollections of Kilanbaggan; recollections of her life before he knew her; recollections of pleasures in which he had not shared:  especially recollections of her old acquaintance with the Major.