The calm and measured accents, the steady gaze of those honest eyes, the resolute attitude, the small well-balanced head proudly erect, the nervous hands clasped firmly on the back of a chair by which the girl was standing, surprised Lady Valeria, and with a far from pleasant surprise. She had expected Hilda to be more easily crushed. She had expected to see a love-sick girl sobbing at her feet, ready to surrender her sweetheart at the first attack. And instead of girlish weakness, she found a woman prepared to do battle for her love. "The letters are addressed to me. I should much like you to read them, in order that you may understand the nature of Bothwell Grahame's 'entanglement'." "I decline to read them. It is quite enough for me to know that he was in love with a married woman, and that she encouraged his love--she, the wife of a good and brave old man--she who, by the right of her noble birth, should have been prouder, truer, purer than women of meaner race. She stooped so low! I am sorry that you came here, Lady Valeria. I am sorry that we have ever met--very sorry that you have told me your secret." "It is everybody's secret by this time. A woman in my position is surrounded by lynx-eyed friends, who read her inmost thoughts. Everybody knows that Bothwell Grahame loved me, and that I returned his love. To you this seems terrible, no doubt. Yet I can tell you that I was a true wife to my husband, as the world estimates truth, and that he died honouring me. You, with your provincial inexperience and your narrow mind, cannot imagine a love which, although unconquered, could remain pure--passionate, intense, devoted, but unstained by sin. Such a love I cherished for Bothwell Grahame, and he for me. We had promised each other that, whenever my release came--and in the course of nature it was not likely to be long deferred--our lives should be linked, our love should be blest. I lived on that hope, and to Bothwell, as those letters would tell you, that hope was no less dear than to me. Honour, right feeling, honesty, were all involved in the promise which bound Bothwell Grahame to me; and I never for an instant doubted that he would keep that promise, never doubted that he was mine till death. But in an evil hour he met you. He was under a cloud. He was maddened by the idea that his neighbours thought the most horrible things of him. You interposed with your girlish sympathy, your sentimental prettiness. You consoled, you encouraged him in his dark hour; and that impulsive nature was moved to a step which he has repented ever since. He committed himself by an avowal which left him no possibility of retreat; and to be true to you he has broken the most sacred promise that man ever made to woman." "You released him from that promise, Lady Valeria." "Never. Some hasty words passed between us on one occasion, and we parted in anger. But there was no question of a release from his solemn engagement to me."