Elsley had wandered, he hardly knew how or whither, for his calling to Mellot was the merest blind,—­stumbling over rocks, bruising himself against tree-trunks, to this wall.  He knew they must pass it.  He waited for them, and had his reward.  Blind with rage, he hardly waited for the sound of their footsteps to die away, before he had sprung into the road, and hurried up in the opposite direction,—­anywhere, everywhere,—­ to escape from them, and from self.  Whipt by the furies, he fled along the road and up the vale, he cared not whither.

And what were Headley and Valencia, who of necessity had paired off together, doing all the while?  They walked on silently side by side for ten minutes; then Frank said,—­

“I have been impertinent, Miss St. Just, and I beg your pardon.”

“No, you have not,” said she, quite hastily.  “You were right, too right,—­has it not been proved within the last five minutes?  My poor sister!  What can be done to mend Mr. Vavasour’s temper?  I wish you could talk to him, Mr. Headley.”

“He is beyond my art.  His age, and his talents, and his—­his consciousness of them,” said Frank, using the mildest term he could find, “would prevent so insignificant a person as me having any influence.  But what I cannot do, God’s grace may.”

“Can it change a man’s character, Mr. Headley?  It may make good men better—­but can it cure temper?”

“Major Campbell must have told you that it can do anything.”

“Ah, yes:  with men as wise, and strong, and noble as he is; but with such a weak, vain man—­”

“Miss St. Just, I know one who is neither wise, nor strong, nor noble:  but as weak and vain as any man; in whom God has conquered—­as He may conquer yet in Mr. Vavasour—­all which makes man cling to life.”

“What all?” asked she, suspecting, and not wrongly, that he spoke of himself.

“All, I suppose, which it is good for them to have crushed.  There are feelings which last on, in spite of all struggles to quench them—­I suppose, because they ought to last; because, while they torture, they still ennoble.  Death will quench them:  or if not, satisfy them:  or if not, set them at rest somehow.”

“Death?” answered she, in a startled tone.

“Yes.  Our friend, Major Campbell’s friend, Death.  We have been seeing a good deal of him together lately, and have come to the conclusion that he is the most useful, pleasant, and instructive of all friends.”

“Oh, Mr. Headley, do not speak so!  Are you in earnest?”

“So much in earnest, that I have resolved to go out as an army chaplain, to see in the war somewhat more of my new friend.”

“Impossible!  Mr. Headley; it will kill you!—­All that horrible fever and cholera!”

“And what possible harm can it do me, if it does kill me, Miss St. Just!”

“Mr. Headley, this is madness!  I—­we cannot allow you to throw away your life thus—­so young, and—­and such prospects before you!  And there is nothing that my brother would not do for you, were it only for your heroism at Aberalva.  There is not one of the family who does not love and respect you, and long to see all the world appreciating you as we do; and your poor mother—­”