l as it may seem, that it had
conquered just at that moment of terrible distress. Valencia's
acceptance of him had been hasty, founded rather on sentiment and
admiration than on deep affection; and her feeling might have faltered,
waned, died away in self-distrust of its own reality, if giddy
amusement, if mere easy happiness, had followed it. But now the fire of
affliction was branding in the thought of him upon her softened heart.

Living at the utmost strain of her character, Campbell gone, her brother
useless, and Lucia and the children depending utterly on her, there was
but one to whom she could look for comfort while she needed it most
utterly; and happy for her and for her lover that she could go to him.

"Poor Lucia! thank God that I have some one who will never treat me so!
who will lift me up and shield me, instead of crushing me!--dear
creature!--Oh that I may find him!" And her heart went out after Frank
with a gush of tenderness which she had never felt before.

"Is this, then, love?" she asked herself; and she found time to slip
into her own room for a moment and arrange her dishevelled hair, ere she
entered the breakfast-room.

Frank was there, luckily alone, pacing nervously up and down. He hurried
up to her, caught both her hands in his, and gazed into her wan and
haggard face with the intensest tenderness and anxiety.

Valencia's eyes looked into the depths of his, passive and confiding,
till they failed before the keenness of his gaze, and swam in glittering
mist.

"Ah!" thought she; "sorrow is a light price to pay for the feeling of
being so loved by such a man!"

"You are tired,--ill? What a night you must have had! Mellot has told me
all."

"Oh, my poor sister!" and wildly she poured out to Frank her wrath
against Elsley, her inability to comfort Lucia, and all the misery and
confusion of the past night.

"This is a sad dawning for the day of my triumph!" thought Frank, who
longed to pour out his heart to her on a thousand very different
matters: but he was content; it was enough for him that she could tell
him all, and confide in him; a truer sign of affection than any selfish
love-making; and he asked, and answered, with such tenderness and
thoughtfulness for poor Lucia, with such a deep comprehension of
Elsley's character, pitying while he blamed, that he won his reward at
last.

"Oh! it would he intolerable, if I had not through it all the thought"
and blushing crimson, her head d