must let me say it!--I do not know how to
thank you enough, I cannot trust myself with the fit words, they would
be so strong: but I owe this confession to you, and to your exceeding
goodness and kindness, when you would have been justified in treating me
as a madman. I was mad, I believe: but I am in my right mind now, I
assure you," said he gaily. "Had I not been, I need hardly say you would
not have seen me here. What a prospect this is!" And he rose and looked
out of the window.

Valencia had heard all this with downcast eyes and unmoved face. Was she
pleased at it? Not in the least, the naughty child that she was; and
more, she grew quite angry with herself, ashamed of herself, for having
thought and felt so much about him the night before. "How silly of me!
He is very well, and does not care for me. And who is he, pray, that I
should even look at him?"

And, as if in order to put her words into practice, she looked at him
there and then. He was gazing out of the window, leaning gracefully and
yet feebly against the shutter, with the full glory of the forenoon sun
upon his sharp-cut profile and rich chestnut locks; and after all,
having looked at him once, she could not help looking at him again. He
was certainly a most gentleman-like man, elegant from head to foot;
there was not an ungraceful line about him, to his very boots, and the
white nails of his slender fingers; even the defects of his figure--the
too great length of the neck and slope of the shoulders--increased his
likeness to those saintly pictures with which he had been mixed up in
her mind the night before. He was at one extreme pole of the different
types of manhood, and that burly doctor who had saved his life at the
other: but her Saint Pere alone perfectly combined the two. There was
nobody like him, after all. Perhaps her wisest plan, as Headley had
forgotten his fancy, was to confess all to the Saint Pere (as she
usually did her little sins), and get some sort of absolution from him.

However, she must say something in answer--

"Yes, it is a very lovely view; but really I must say one more word
about this matter. I have to thank you, you know, for the good faith
which you have kept with me."

He looked round, seemingly amused. "_Cela va sans dire_!" and he bowed;
"pray do not say any more about the matter;" and he looked at her with
such humble and thankful eyes, that Valencia was sorry not to hear more
from him than--

"Pray tell me--f