"No concern? Just like your hard-heartedness, Mr. Bowie. And as soon as I'm gone, of course you will be flirting with these impudent Welshwomen, in their horrid hats."
"Maybe, yes; maybe, no. But flirting's no marrying, Mrs. Clara."
"True for you, sir! Men were deceivers ever," quoth Clara, and flounced up stairs; while Bowie looked after her with a grim smile, and caught her, when she came down again, long enough to give her a great kiss; the only language which he used in wooing, and that but rarely.
"Dinna fash, lassie. Mind your lady and the poor bairns like a godly handmaiden, and I'll buy the ring when the sawmon fishing's over, and we'll just be married ere I start for the Crimee"
"The sawmon!" cried Clara. "I'll see you turned into a mermaid first, and married to a sawmon!"
"And ye won't do anything o' the kind," said Bowie to himself, and shouldered a valise.
In ten minutes the ladies were packed into the carriage, and away, under Mellot's care. Frank watched Valencia looking back, and smiling through her tears, as they rolled through the village; and then got into his car, and rattled down the southern road to Pont Aberglaslyn, his hand still tingling with the last pressure of Valencia's.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE BROAD STONE OF HONOUR.
But where has Stangrave been all this while?