Page:Braddon--Wyllard's weird.djvu/231

Rh The builder had gone home to his young wife and baby, in a cheerful red-brick cottage of his own construction; and Bothwell was pacing the old neglected garden alone, in the autumn sunset, when he looked up suddenly, and saw a dark figure standing in the narrow path between him and the rosy western sky.

It was the tall slender figure of a woman, robed in black and thickly veiled. That black figure seemed to shut out all the warmth and beauty of the glowing west. Bothwell's heart grew cold within him at sight of it.

He had not a moment's doubt or hesitation, though the woman's face was hardly visible under the thick crape veil.

"Valeria!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, it is Valeria."

"How, in the name of all that's reasonable, did you come here?"

"A pair of post-horses brought me; that was easy enough when I knew where to find you. I heard at Bodmin Road station that you were here. You had been seen to drive by, and you told the station-master where you were going."

stood face to face in the evening light, Bothwell and Valeria; those two who had loved each other, who had once been wont to meet with smiles and gladness, hand clasped in hand—they stood pale and silent, each waiting for the other to speak.

"How could you do so mad a thing as to come here, Lady Valeria?" Bothwell asked, at last.

His heart was beating passionately, not with love, but with anger. He was indignant at the unfeminine feeling shown by this pursuit of him, this persecution of a man who had frankly owned a new and wiser attachment.

"It is not the first madness I have been guilty of for your sake," she answered. "There was the madness of loving you, in the first instance; and the still greater madness of being constant to you; even when I suspected that you had grown tired of me. But it was not weariness of me that influenced you, was it, Bothwell? It was the false position which grew irksome; the falsehood towards that good, brave man. It was that which made you desert me, was it not? That is all over now. My bondage is over. I am my own mistress, answerable