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Updated: June 6, 2025
"Valencia, will you trust me?" "Yes!" cried she, looking up at him suddenly: "if you will not go to the war." "No no no! Would you have me turn traitor and coward to God; and now, of all moments in my life?" "Noble creature!" said she; "you will make me love you whether I wish or not." What was it, after all, by which Frank Headley won Valencia's love? I cannot tell.
Me, I ride to find for-sure." Valencia dropped his match, and leaned negligently from the saddle and picked it out of the grass, his eyes stealing a look at the stranger as he came up. "Good work," commented Jack under his breath to Dade. But Valencia's ears were keen for praise; he heard, and from that moment he was Jack's friend.
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.
Valencia's eyes could not help glancing at Elsley, who had wandered away to the neighbouring brook, and was gazing with all his eyes upon a ferny rock, having left Lucia to help Claude with his photographing. Frank saw her look, and read its meaning; and answered her thoughts, perhaps too hastily. "And what a really well-read and agreeable man he is, all the while!
Vavasour began bustling about the room, collecting little valuables, and looking over her shoulders at the now unwelcome guest. But Frank leaned back in a cosy arm-chair, and did not stir. His hands were clasped on his knees; he seemed lost in thought; very pale: but there was a firm set look about his lips which attracted Valencia's attention.
And at his elbow another made answer boldly: "Don José Pacheco!" José smiled and lifted his shoulders deprecatingly at the tribute, while fifty voices shouted loyally his name. Dade, pressing his hand upon Valencia's shoulder, led him back into the dancing shadows that lay between the fires. "Let it go," he urged. "Don José holds the medal, and he's entitled to the glory.
Valencia's level eyebrows lifted "Really, I don't think that will do. Better quietly eliminate him." "You mean treat him as if he were guilty when, I am sure he is not." Mrs. Van Tyle's little laugh rippled out. "You're quite dramatic about it, my dear. The man's of no importance. He's a poseur, a demagogue, and one with a vicious streak in him.
But why is not Frank Headley with them, when he is needed most? And why are Valencia's eyes more red with weeping than even her sister's sorrow need have made them? Because Frank Headley is rolling away in a French railway, on his road to Marseilles, and to what Heaven shall find for him to do. Yes, he is gone Eastward Ho among the many; will he come Westward Ho again, among the few?
A hand grasped Valencia's wrist while his arm was lifted to strike, so that the three men stood, taut-muscled and still, like a shadowy, sculptured group that pictured some mythological conflict. "Let go, Valencia. This is nothing to fight over. Let go." Valencia's angry eyes questioned the unreadable ones of his majordomo; but he did not let go, and so the three stood for a moment longer.
Once he looked up in Valencia's face, and saw that she was looking at him. A flush came over his cheeks for a moment, and then he seemed as impassive as ever. What could he want there! How very gauche and rude of him; so unlike him, too! And she said, civilly enough, to him, "I fear, Mr. Headley, we must begin packing up now." "I fear you must, indeed," answered he, as if starting from a dream.
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