"But, as I suppose she is elderly too, perhaps she will not survive him very long," pursued Dora, infinitely compassionate for the woes of a broken-hearted widow. "Lady Valeria elderly!" exclaimed Bothwell. "She is not thirty." "What, was your good General Harborough so foolish as to marry a girl?" "Yes. It was the only foolishness of his life that I have ever heard of; and he was so kind to the woman he married that he might be pardoned for his folly." "I hope she was fond of him, and worthy of him." Bothwell did not enter upon the question, and his reticence about Lady Valeria Harborough struck Dora as altogether at variance with his natural frankness. And then she remembered that unexplained entanglement which he had confessed to her--an entanglement with a married woman--and it flashed upon her that Lady Valeria might be the heroine of that story. He had spoken of General Harborough, but never of General Harborough's wife. There had been a studied reserve upon that subject. And now Dora discovered that Valeria Harborough was a young woman. The invitation to the funeral came by next morning's post--a formal invitation sent by a fashionable firm of undertakers--and Bothwell had no excuse for staying away from Fox Hill, where the mourners were to assemble at three o'clock in the afternoon. He had no fear that Lady Valeria would be present upon such an occasion; but there was just the possibility that she might send for him when she knew he was in the house. She had always been reckless of conventionalities, carrying matters with such a high hand as to defy slander. His heart sank within him as he approached the classic portico of the villa. Deepest regret for his dead benefactor, deepest remorse for having wronged him, weighed down his heart as he entered the darkened house, where rooms built for brightness and gaiety looked all the more gloomy in the day of mourning. The hall was hung with black, and in the midst stood the plain oak coffin, draped with the colours which the General had fought for forty years before among the wild hills of Afghanistan. Crosses and wreaths of purest white were heaped upon the coffin, and the atmosphere of the darkened hall was heavy with the perfume of stephanotis and tuberose; those two flowers which the General had always associated with his wife, who rarely decorated herself or her rooms with any other exotics.