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.
Living at the utmost strain of her character, Campbell gone, her brother useless, and Lucia and the children depending utterly on her, there was but one to whom she could look for comfort while she needed it most utterly; and happy for her and for her lover that she could go to him.
"Poor Lucia! thank God that I have some one who will never treat me so! who will lift me up and shield me, instead of crushing me!--dear creature!--Oh that I may find him!" And her heart went out after Frank with a gush of tenderness which she had never felt before.
"Is this, then, love ?" she asked herself; and she found time to slip into her own room for a moment and arrange her dishevelled hair, ere she entered the breakfast-room.
Frank was there, luckily alone, pacing nervously up and down.