"Run away. It will look so—so cowardly, and there's the truth of it, before those fine fellows down there: and just as I am come among them, too! The commander-in-chief to turn tail at the first shot! Though I can't be of any use, I know, and I should have liked a fortnight's fishing so," said he in a dolorous voice, "before going to be eaten up with flies at Varna—for this Crimean expedition is all moonshine."

"Don't be too sure of that," said Campbell. "We shall go; and some of us who go will never come back, Freddy. I know those Russians better than many, and I have been talking them over lately with Thurnall, who has been in their service."

"Has he been at Sevastopol?"

"No. Almost the only place on earth where he has not been: but from all he says, and from all I know, we are undervaluing our foes, as usual, and shall smart for it!"

"We'll lick them, never fear!"

"Yes; but not at the first round. Scoutbush, your life has been child's play as yet. You are going now to see life in earnest,—the sort of life which average people have been living, in every age and country, since Adam's fall; a life of sorrow and danger, tears and blood, mistake, confusion, and perplexity; and you will find it a very new sensation; and, at first, a very ugly one. All the more reason for doing what good deeds you can before you go; for you may have no time left to do any on the other side of the sea."

Scoutbush was silent awhile.

"Well; I'm afraid of nothing, I hope: only I wish one could meet this cholera face to face, as one will those Russians, with a good sword in one's hand, and a good horse between one's knees; and have a chance of giving him what he brings, instead of being kicked off by the cowardly Rockite, no one knows how; and not even from behind a turf dyke, but out of the very clouds."

"So we all say, in every battle, Scoutbush. Who ever sees the man who sent the bullet through him? And yet we fight on. Do you not think the greatest terror, the only real terror, in any battle, is the chance shot? which come from no one knows where, and hit no man can guess whom? If you go to the Crimea, as you will, you will feel what I felt at the Cape, and Cabul, and the Punjab, twenty times,—the fear of dying like a dog, one knew not how."

"And yet I'll fight, Campbell!"

"Of course you will, and take your chance. Do so now!"

"By Jove, Campbell—I always say it—you're the most sensible man I ever met; and, by Jove, the doctor comes the next. My sister shall have the yacht, and I'll go up to Penalva."

"You will do two good deeds at once, then," said the Major. "You will do what is right, and you will give heart to many a poor wretch here. Believe me, Scoutbush, you will never repent of this."

"By Jove, it always does one good to hear you talk in that way, Campbell! One feels—I don't know—so much of a man when one is with you; not that I shan't take uncommonly good care of myself, old fellow; that is but fair: but as for running away, as I said, why—why—why I can't, and so I won't!"

"By the by," said the Major, "there is one thing which I have forgotten, and which they will never recollect. Is the yacht victualled—with fresh meat and green stuff, I mean?"

"Whew—w—"

"I will go back, borrow a lantern, and forage in the garden, like an old campaigner. I have cut a salad with my sword before now."

"And made it in your helmet, with macassar sauce?" And the two went their ways.

Meanwhile, before they had left the room, a notable conversation had been going on between Valencia and Headley.

Headley had re-entered the room so much paler than he went out, that everybody noticed his altered looks. Valencia chose to attribute them to fear.

"So! Are you returned from the sick man already, Mr. Headley?" asked she, in a marked tone.

"I have been forbidden by the doctor to go near him at present, Miss St. Just," said he quietly, but in a sort of under-voice, which hinted that he wished her to ask no more questions. A shade passed over her forehead, and she began chatting rather noisily to the rest of the party, till Elsley, her brother, and Campbell went out.

Valencia looked up at him, expecting him to go too. Mrs. Vavasour began bustling about the room, collecting little valuables, and looking over her shoulders at the now unwelcome guest. But Frank leaned back in a cosy arm-chair, and did not stir. His hands were clasped on his knees; he seemed lost in thought; very pale: but there was a firm set look about his lips which attracted Valencia's attention. Once he looked up in Valencia's face, and saw that she was looking at him. A flush came over his cheeks for a moment, and then he seemed as impassive as ever. What could he want there! How very gauche and rude of him; so unlike him, too! And she said, civilly enough, to him, "I fear, Mr. Headley, we must begin packing up now."

"I fear you must, indeed," answered he, as if starting from a dream. He spoke in a tone, and with a look, which made both the women start; for what they meant it was impossible to doubt.

"I fear you must. I have foreseen it a long time; and so, I fear (and he rose from his seat), must I, unless I mean to be very rude. You will at least take away with you the knowledge, that you have given to one person's existence, at least for a few weeks, pleasure more intense than he thought earth could hold."

"I trust that pretty compliment was meant for me," said Lucia, half playful, half reproving.

"I am sure that it ought not to have been meant for me," said Valencia, more downright than her sister. Both could see for whom it was meant, by the look of passionate worship which Frank fixed on a face which, after all, seemed made to be worshipped.

"I trust that neither of you," answered he, quietly, "think me impertinent enough to pretend to make love, as it is called, to Miss St. Just. I know who she is, and who I am. Gentleman as I am, and the descendant of gentlemen" (and Frank looked a little proud, as he spoke, and very handsome), "I see clearly enough the great gulf fixed between us; and I like it; for it enables me to say truth which I otherwise dare not have spoken; as a brother might say to a sister, or a subject to a queen. Either analogy will do equally well and equally ill."

Frank, without the least intending it, had taken up the very strongest military position. Let a man once make a woman understand, or fancy, that he knows that he is nothing to her; and confess boldly that there is a great gulf fixed between them, which he has no mind to bridge over: and then there is little that he may not see or do, for good or for evil.

And therefore it was that Lucia answered gently, "I am sure you are not well, Mr. Headley. The excitement of the night has been too much for you."

"Do I look excited, my dear madam?" he answered quietly. "I assure you that I am as calm as a man must be who believes that he has but a few days to live, and trusts, too, that when he dies, he will be infinitely happier than he ever has been on earth, and lay down an office which he has never discharged otherwise than ill; which has been to him a constant source of shame and sorrow."

"Do not speak so!" said Valencia, with her Irish impetuous generosity; "you are unjust to yourself. We have watched you, felt for you, honoured you, even when we differed from you"—What more she would have said, I know not, but at that moment Elsley's peevish voice was heard calling over the stairs, "Lucia! Lucia?"

"Oh dear! He will wake the children!" cried Lucia, looking at her sister, as much as to say, "How can I leave you!"

"Run, run, my dear creature!" said Valencia, with a self-confident smile: and the two were left alone.

The moment that Mrs. Vavasour left the room, there vanished from Frank's face that intense look of admiration which had made even Valencia uneasy. He dropped his eyes, and his voice faltered as he spoke again. He acknowledged the change in their position, and Valencia saw that he did so, and liked him the better for it.

"I shall not repeat, Miss St. Just, now that we are alone, what I said just now of the pleasure which I have had during the last month. I am not poetical, or given to string metaphors together; and I could only go over the same dull words once more. But I could ask, if I were not asking too much, leave to prolong at least a shadow of that pleasure to the last moment. That I shall die shortly, and of this cholera, is with me a fixed idea, which nothing can remove. No, madam—it is useless to combat it! But had I anything, by which to the last moment I could bring back to my fancy what has been its sunlight for so long; even if it were a scrap of the hem of your garment, aye, a grain of dust off your feet— God forgive me! He and His mercy ought to be enough to keep me up: but one's weakness may be excused for clinging to such slight floating straws of comfort."

Valencia paused, startled, and yet affected. How she had played with this deep pure heart! And yet, was it pure? Did he wish, by exciting her pity, to trick her into giving him what he might choose to consider a token of affection?

And she answered coldly enough—

"I should be sorry, after what you have just said, to chance hurting you by refusing. I put it to your own good feeling—have you not asked somewhat too much?"

"Certainly too much, madam, in any common case," said he, quite unmoved. "Certainly too much, if I asked you for it, as I do not, as the token of an affection which I know well you do not, cannot feel. But—take my words as they stand—were you to—It would be returned if I die, in a few weeks; and returned still sooner if I live. And, madam," said he lowering his voice, "I vow to you, before Him who sees us both, that, as far as I am concerned, no human being shall ever know of the fact."

Frank had at last touched the wrong chord.

"What, Mr. Headley? Can you think that I am to have secrets in common with you, or with any other man? No, sir! If I granted your request, I should avow it as openly as I shall refuse it."

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?"

The rose from her bosom? No. That was too significant at once, and too commonplace; besides, it might wither, and he find an excuse for not restoring it. It must be something valuable, stately, formal, which he must needs return. And she drew off a diamond hoop, and put it quietly into his hand.

"You promise to return if?"

"I promised long ago."

He took it, and lifted it—she thought that he was going to press it to his lips. Instead, he put it to his forehead, bowing forward and moved it slightly. She saw that he made with it the sign of the Cross.

"I thank you," he said, with a look of quiet gratitude. "I expected as much, when you came to understand my request. Again, thank you!" and he drew back humbly, and left her there alone; while her heart smote her bitterly for all the foolish encouragement which she had given to one so tender and humble, and delicate and true.

And so did Frank Headley get what he wanted; by that plain earnest simplicity, which has more power (let worldlings pride themselves as they will on their knowledge of women) than all the cunning wiles of the most experienced rake; and only by aping which, after all, can the rake conquer. It was a strange thing for Valencia to do, no doubt: but the strange things which are done in the world (which are some millions daily) are just what keep the world alive.