Page:Braddon--Wyllard's weird.djvu/267

Rh With his knowledge of India and Indian war tactics, he would inevitably make his mark. There are hardly three men in the House of Commons who have any real knowledge of that vast Eastern world for which English politicians legislate. You see I have dreamed for him, thought for him. All my ambition is for him, and not for myself."

"I am willing to believe that you love him, Lady Valeria," said Hilda, with frigid distinctness, looking her rival full in the face, "since nothing but the blindest love could induce any woman in your position to lower yourself as you have done—first in India as General Harborough's wife, and secondly to-day as General Harborough's widow—when you come to me and ask me to give up my betrothed husband, the man to whom I am to be married next Tuesday; for I suppose that is the gist of all you have said to me."

"I ask nothing from you, Miss Heathcote. I know the narrow view which most girls of your age, brought up as you have been, take of life and its obligations. I do not expect large-minded ideas from a young lady with your surroundings." This was said with infinite scorn of Hilda's rustic rearing. "But I think it well that you should know how much Bothwell Grahame surrenders for the privilege of having you for a wife. Of course it is quite possible that the recompense may be worth the sacrifice. It is for you to judge of that. I wish you good-day."

Hilda bowed and rang the bell, without a word. She did not accompany her visitor to the drawing-room door, but stood in a stony silence looking out at the window in front of her, with fixed eyes.

It was only when the outer door had closed on Lady Valeria that the girl flung herself on the nearest sofa and abandoned herself to her grief.

Alas, this entanglement of the past had been something more than a garland of roses. It had been a chain from which her lover had tried to release himself, but whose iron links yet hung about him.

All the happiness was gone out of her life, all the sweet tranquillity which had been the holiest charm in her love for Bothwell, the deep faith in her beloved, the assurance of his trustworthiness, his unalloyed love for her. How could she ever again believe in that love, after she had heard the history of his passion for another, after she had read of that wild infatuation in his own hand, after she had seen the woman he had thus loved and thus addressed—a woman to win and hold the love of men, a woman whose face had that subtle charm of supreme refinement and distinction which is far above the peach-bloom tints and perfect lines of stereotyped beauty? In Valeria the broken-hearted girl acknowledged a siren before whose fascinations the wisest man might be as a fool. She compared herself with her