"Pen-y-gwryd?" cried both men at once.
"Yes. Major Campbell, I wish to show it to you."
Valencia's tone and manner was significant enough to make Claude Mellot bid them both good-night.
When he had shut the door behind him, Valencia put the letter into the
Major's hand.
He was too much absorbed in it to look up at her; but if he had done so, he would have been startled by the fearful capacity of passion which changed, for the moment, that gay Queen Whims into a terrible Roxana, as she stood, leaning against the mantelpiece, but drawn up to her full height, her lips tight shut, eyes which gazed through and through him in awful scrutiny, holding her very breath, while a nervous clutching of the little hand said, "If you have tampered with my sister's heart, better for you that you were dead!"
He read it through, once, twice, with livid face; then clashed it on the floor.
"Fool!—cur!—liar!—she is as pure as God's sunlight."
"You need not tell me that," said Valencia, through her closed teeth.
"Fool!—fool!" And then, in a moment, his voice changed from indignation to the bitterest self-reproach.
"And fool I; thrice fool! Who am I, to rail on him? Oh God! what have I done?" And he covered his face with his hands.