"My dearest Lucia, you are not fit to travel now!"
"I shall die if I stay here; die if I do nothing! I must find him!" whispered she. "Don't speak loud, or Clara will hear. I can find him, and nobody can but me! Why don't you help me to pack, Valencia?"
"My dearest! but what will Scoutbush say when he comes home, and finds you gone?"
"What right has he to interfere? I am Elsley's wife, am I not? and may follow my husband if I like:" and she went on desperately collecting, not her own things, but Elsley's.
Valencia watched her with tear-brimming eyes; collecting all his papers, counting over his clothes, murmuring to herself that he would want this and that in London. Her sanity seemed failing her, under the fixed idea that she had only to see him, and set all right with, a word.
"I will go and get you some breakfast," said she at last.
"I want none. I am too busy to eat. Why don't you help me?"
Valencia had not the heart to help, believing, as she did, that Lucia's journey would be as bootless as it would be dangerous to her health.
"I will bring you some breakfast, and you must try; then I will help to pack:" and utterly bewildered she went out; and the thought uppermost in her mind was,—"Oh, that I could find Frank Headley?"
Happy was it for Frank's love, paradoxical 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.