It was just this confession, this humiliation, to which Lady Valeria could not bring herself. Candour was the very last virtue to which she inclined. She had not been brought up in the school of truth. Her father had been a tyrant, her mother a dealer in expedients, a diplomatist, a marvel of tact and cleverness, able to achieve wonders in domestic management and in social policy. But life at Carlavarock Castle had been a constant strain, and duplicity had become an instinct with mother and children. There had been always something to hide from the Earl--a son's debts, a daughter's flirtation, a milliner's bill, a debt of honour. Valeria had been oppressed with gambling debts before she was twenty. She had played deep, and borrowed money in her first season. She had married, hoping that General Harborough's wealth would be hers to spend as she pleased; but in this she had been disappointed. She had married the most generous of men; but she had married a man of business. He made a magnificent settlement before marriage; he made a will after marriage, leaving the bulk of his fortune to his young wife, to be hers, and in her own control, if there were no children--hers without an embargo against a second marriage. She had pin-money that would have been a liberal allowance for a countess; but she had not the handling of her husband's income. She could not have cheated him out of a five-pound note. He had told her in the beginning of their married life that it would be so. He was a man of business, and she was too young to be troubled with the sordid details of domestic life. "Order what you like, love. Make our home as beautiful as you can. I will pay your bills, and take care that you are not cheated by your tradesmen." At the outset Lady Valeria had accepted this arrangement as altogether delightful; but there came a time when she found that it had its inconveniences. To-night, in the balmy September weather, the windows of the villa were all open to the sky and the garden, open to the music of the distant sea, and Lady Valeria was sitting in the verandah where a week ago she had bidden farewell to Bothwell Grahame. It was nearly midnight, and the crowd was concentrated in the music-room, where Herr Stahlmann was playing a new Sauterelle on his violoncello. The moon was shining over the sea yonder, gleaming upon the long white line of the breakwater; and the distant view of town and harbour looked even more Italian than in the daytime. Lady Valeria wore a long flowing gown of an almost Grecian simplicity, a gown of dead-white cashmere, bordered with a marvellous embroidery of peacocks' feathers, which fell in a slanting line from shoulder to hem, the brilliant colouring flashing in the moonlight, as the wearer slowly fanned herself with a large peacock-feather fan.