Then came a period of comparative liberty for Bothwell. He received an occasional letter from Lady Valeria, full of upbraidings and regrets. He answered as best he might--kindly, affectionately even; but he flattered himself that the fatal tie, the dishonourable engagement, was a folly of the past. He was all the more anxious to believe this, during that peaceful winter at Penmorval, on account of his growing esteem for another woman. O, what a different feeling it was, that winter love of his! Those happy half-hours amidst the rimy hedgerows, with the shrill north-easter swirling across the dark brown of the ploughed fields, the yellow light of a setting sun shining beneath a leaden sky. How curiously different was the girl's light happy talk in the English lane--talk which all the world might have heard--from those impassioned whispers beside the fountain, under the stars of Orient! At first it seemed to him that he was only soothed and cheered by his acquaintance with Hilda Heathcote. He affected to consider her a mere girl, hardly emerged from the nursery. He was surprised to find how rightly she thought upon the gravest subjects. Then all at once he awoke to the knowledge that he loved her: and while he was hesitating, doubting whether he were free to indulge this new and purer, sweeter, happier love, hardly daring to ask himself whether that old tie was or was not cancelled, he received a letter from Valeria, with the Paris postmark. "We have just arrived here from Brindisi," she wrote. "We shall stay here for a few days while I order some gowns, and we shall be in London for a few weeks. After that we go to the General's place near Plymouth, where you must come and see me every day, just as you used at Simla. O Bothwell, I can hardly trust myself to write. I dare not tell you half the joy I feel in the idea of our meeting. If you cared for me you would come to London. It would be so easy to pretend business, and you would be warmly welcomed in Grosvenor Square. You might bring your portmanteau and stop with us. There is a barrack of empty rooms on the third floor. Ours is one of those huge corner houses, and the piggeries for the servants are over the offices at the back. I hope you will contrive to come. Your last letter seemed to me so cold and distant--as if you were beginning to forget, or as if you had not forgiven my anger at your desertion. Ah, Bothwell, you should have pitied me and sympathised with me in that cruel parting. You ought to have known that my anger was despair. But you thought only of your own dignity, your own self-respect--not of my sorrow. Men are so selfish."