The villa had been planned by an architect of taste and culture, and built regardless of expense. The house was not large when measured by the number of its rooms; but all the rooms were spacious, lightsome, and lofty. The decorations were of the simplest. The glory of the place was its conservatories, which were so arranged as to introduce flowers and tropical foliage into every part of the dwelling. A long marble colonnade, enclosed by plate-glass shutters in winter or bad weather, surrounded the house, and here bloomed and flourished all that is rarest and loveliest in modern horticulture. The central hall had a glass roof, and was more a conservatory than a hall. The corridors between drawing-room and dining-room, between boudoir and study, were indoor gardens. Flowers pervaded the house, and harmonised admirably with the elegant simplicity of the furniture, the draperies of delicate chintz and soft India muslin. The villa had been built sixty years ago, in the days of the Georges, a period when Italian colonnades, Corinthian porticoes, and Pompeian conservatories were the rage; but the house suited Lady Valeria just as a well-chosen frame suits a picture. On this summery September morning Lady Valeria was seated in the colonnade, half reclining in one of those very low chairs which she always affected, being one of the few women who can rise gracefully from a seat about a foot from the ground. She was half hidden by the foliage of oleanders and magnolia, and it was only by a glimmer of white amongst the glossy green that Bothwell descried her in the distance as he crossed the lawn. There was a fountain on the lawn here, just as at Simla; but the fountain was a late improvement, insisted upon by Lady Valeria. "It will recall Simla, where we were so happy," she told her husband. "And yet you were so impatient to leave India, towards the last," he said, almost reproachfully. "Yes, I was very tired of India at the last. There is an end of all things." Bothwell had obeyed Lady Valeria's instructions to the letter. He had entered the grounds by a side gate, so as to escape challenge at the lodge: and now he made his way boldly to the colonnade in front of her boudoir. The boudoir was not a particularly sacred apartment, as it formed one in the suite of rooms and conservatories which communicated along the whole length of the house. Italian villas of the Georgian era were not planned for seclusion.