"Nonsense! I dare say he wanted to get home to write poetry, as you did
not praise what he had written. I know his vanity and flightiness."

"You do?" asked he quickly, in a painful tone. "However, I have offended
him, I can see; and deeply. I must go up, and make things right, for the
sake of--for everybody's sake."

"Then do not ask me anything. Lucia loves him intensely, and let that be
enough for us."

The Major saw the truth of the last sentence no more than Valencia
herself did; for Valencia would have been glad enough to pour out to
him, with every exaggeration, her sister's woes and wrongs, real and
fancied, had not the sense of her own folly with Vavasour kept her
silent and conscience-stricken.

Valencia remarked the Major's pained look as they walked up the street.

"You dear conscientious Saint Père, why will you fret yourself about
this foolish matter? He will have forgotten it all in an hour; I know
him well enough."

Major Campbell was not the sort of person to admire Elsley the more for
throwing away capriciously such deep passion as he had seen him show,
any more than for showing the same.

"He must be of a very volatile temperament."

"Oh, all geniuses are."