Valencia was frightened. She had never heard her Saint Père speak so severely and sarcastically; and she feared that if he knew the truth he would be terribly angry. She had never seen him angry; but she knew well enough that that passion, when it rose in him in a righteous cause, would be very awful to see; and she was one of those women who always grow angry when they are frightened. So she was angry at his calling her Miss St. Just; she was angry because she chose to think he was talking at her; though she reasonably might have guessed it, seeing that he had scolded her a hundred times for want of steadiness of character. She was more angry than all, because she knew that her own vanity had caused--at least disagreement--between Lucia and Elsley. All which (combined with her natural wish not to confess an unpleasant truth about her sister) justified her, of course, in answering,-- "Miss St. Just does not intrude into the secrets of her sister's married life; and if she did, she would not repeat them." Major Campbell sighed, and walked on a few moments in silence, then,-- "Pardon, Miss St. Just; I asked a rude question, and I am sorry for it." "Pardon you, my dear Saint Père?" cried she, almost catching at his hand. "Never! I must either believe you infallible, or hate you eternally. It is I that was naughty; I always am; but you will forgive Queen Whims?" "Who could help it?" said the Major, in a sad, sweet tone. "But here is the postman. May I open my letters?" "You may do as you like, now you have forgiven me. Why, what is it, mon Saint Père?" A sudden shock of horror had passed over the Major's face, as he read his letter: but it had soon subsided into stately calm. "A gallant officer, whom we and all the world knew well, is dead of cholera, at his post, where a man should die.... And, my dear Miss St. Just, we are going to the Crimea." "We?--you?" "Yes. The expedition will really sail, I find." "But not you?" "I shall offer my services. My leave of absence will, in any case, end on the first of September; and even if it did not, my health is quite enough restored to enable me to walk up to a cannon's mouth." "Ah, mon Saint Père, what words are these?" "The words of an old soldier, Queen Whims, who has been so long at his trade that he has got to take a strange pleasure in it." "In killing?" "No; only in the chance of----. But I will not cast an unnecessary shadow over your bright soul. There will be shadows enough over it soon, without my help." "What do you mean?" "That you, and thousands more as delicate, if not as fair as you, will see, ere long, what the realities of human life are; and in a way of which you have never dreamed."