[Illustration: Cover art]





[Frontispiece: "'My dear,' says Lady Etwynde to Lauraine, as she sits
in the boudoir of the latter, 'your roses looked charming.'" (Chapter
IX.)]





  TWO BAD BLUE EYES


  By

  "RITA"

  Author of "Joan and Mrs. Carr," "Darby and Joan,"
  "Vivienne," etc.



  WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
  LONDON, MELBOURNE AND TORONTO




TWO BAD BLUE EYES



CHAPTER I

It is Lauraine Douglas' wedding-day.

A delicious gleam of sunshine streams through the curtained
windows--flickers over the dainty arrangements of the toilet-table,
loses itself in the white wonders of lace, linen, and embroidery
strewed about in different directions, and finally wanders to a dusky
head on the pillows, and plays at hide and seek over the closed
eyelids of a very lovely face.

The eyelids open--quite suddenly, quite wakefully--not with any
half-and-half preparation--any symptom of sleepiness.

The inquisitive sunbeam has done its work, and retreats bashfully now
as two white arms are thrown suddenly up and placed beneath the
girl's head, and resting thus she takes a survey of the mysterious
garments, the pretty room, the aspect of the weather, as promised by
the wealth of prodigal sunlight, and, finally, the clock on the
opposite chimney-piece.

"My wedding-day!"--so ran her thoughts.

"Only a few hours more and I am Lauraine Douglas no longer!  Only a
few hours and the old life and the things of it are done and past for
ever--for ever.  How strange it seems to think of that now! ... My
wedding-day! ... How different I thought it would be once.  How
different I thought I should feel.  Oh, Keith!  Keith! what an old,
far-away dream that looks.  I suppose you have long ago forgotten it.
And yet how we loved each other ... you and I!  A boy-and-girl fancy,
my mother calls it.  Well, perhaps, it was; it is long enough since I
heard from him, and I suppose he has long forgotten me.  I wonder if
he has made the fortune he spoke of yet?  But what on earth makes me
think of these things to-day, of all days? ... And so it really is my
wedding-day at last!  I wonder how most girls feel on their
wedding-day!  I can't say I feel in any way different--no stir, or
flutter, or anticipation of any description.  I am glad it is going
to be fine, and how nice to be able to wear _real_ orange blossoms!
Sir Francis was very good to send them.  I wonder if I shall ever
think of him and call him anything but _Sir_ Francis.  Somehow I
never can.  I wish he was not so old--old, at least, for me, and I
wish he did not love me in quite such a fierce, wild fashion.  I seem
to have been quite swept off my feet by the current of his passion
and my mother's persuasions....  After all, I suppose one must be
married some time or other ... only--only----"

She breaks off with a sudden sigh, and sits up in the bed, pushing
off the thick, dusky hair from her brows with an impatient gesture.

"It is no use deceiving myself.  I am going to be married and I
_hate_ the thought, and how I have been dragged into it I scarcely
know.  Sometimes I think I should never have yielded....  How oddly
one drifts into things! ... And Sir Francis is so infatuated, and it
seemed no use saying 'No.'  I wish he were not so jealous.  I can't
understand the feeling myself.  I wonder what it's like?  Not
pleasant by any means, if I am to judge by my future lord and master.
Will he be my master, I wonder?  How I should hate to be ordered
about, and kept in check, and ruled!  Mamma is bad enough, in all
conscience; but, still, I have managed to get my own way with her,
pretty often.  How she has badgered me about this marriage, and what
a desperate hurry they have been in to get it off!  Heigho! only a
month since I bartered my liberty for--for--ahem!--shall I go over
all 'the good gifts that crown me queen' of this much-sought-after
baronet?  Unencumbered estates, magnificent income, ancient
family--pooh! how sickening it is!  After all, what do I care for
these things?  One comfort is, I go to him heart-whole.  No
sentiments in the background, no lovers to moan and fret over.  I
wonder if I am really cold-hearted, or if I never shall fall in love?
Gracious! what am I saying?  That folly must be over after 11.30
to-day.  I suppose the nearest approach to it was that boy-and-girl
romance with Keith.  Poor old Keith!  What a nice boy he was, and
what a dare-devil, impetuous, headstrong sort of fellow!  No
milk-and-water lover he--a regular torrent of impetuosity, bearing
one along, whether one would or no.  I suppose he has forgotten me
though, and no wonder.  How rude mamma was to him, and how delighted
when he turned his back on the Old World and went off to the New!  I
suppose if I ever see him again he will be a regular Yankee, and talk
like that dreadful woman, Mrs. Bradshaw B. Woollffe, as she calls
herself.  And she will be at the breakfast, after all!  Mamma _would_
ask her.  Heavens! how she does worship money! But I suppose that
comes of having had so little all her life."

A little sleepy yawn comes in here, then the pretty head turns away
from the sunlight, and nestles itself among the pillows again.  But
it is no use to woo sleep any longer.  The eyes remain open, and the
brain is busy with thoughts, until at eight o'clock a knock at the
door is followed by the entrance of a maid, with hot water and
letters.  The girl sits up and stretches out her hands for the
latter--just two.  She holds them a moment, and looks hesitatingly at
the superscription.

"The last time I shall see that name," she murmurs, half aloud, as
she reads the "Miss Douglas" that has been her nomenclature for
twenty years of her life.  "Heigho! it makes me sad to think of it,
after all....  Yes, Jane, draw up the blind.  A fine morning?  Well,
of course, I can see that.  No, I don't want anything more.  You can
go till I ring."

Left alone, she opens the letters.  The first is apparently of little
interest, and is tossed carelessly aside.  The second--at the first
line she starts and flushes as red as a June rose; then with eager
eyes reads on with devouring speed till the end.  It is not a very
long letter, but it seems to agitate her in no small degree.

"How strange!" she says.  "After all these years--and to-day, of all
days!  What on earth am I to do?"

She grows very white, and for some moments leans back on the snowy
pillows, with her breath coming fitfully and unevenly, and her eyes
looking sad and troubled.  Then with a great effort she rises and
puts the letter aside, and proceeds with her morning toilette.

She is standing before the mirror in a loose white dressing-gown, her
long rich hair hanging loosely about her, when the door opens and a
lady enters.

A very handsome, stately lady, with sufficient likeness to the girl
to suggest their relationship; but the soft curved lips of the young
face are thin and cold in the older one, and the eyes, though
brilliant, still lack the softness and tenderness that give so great
a charm to those of Lauraine.

"Up and dressed, my darling!" she says, in clear, sweet tones.  Then
she comes near to the girl and kisses her effusively on both cheeks.
"Will you come to my boudoir for breakfast?" she continues.  "I made
Henriette dress my hair first, so that you can have all her attention
afterwards.  What a barbarous custom to have weddings so early in the
day!  You look very well, dear; just a trifle pale, but that is quite
correct for a bride."  Then she kisses her again, and Lauraine
submits to the caresses with a sort of passive contempt.  There is no
gladness on her face, nor in her eyes, and she has certainly grown
very pale, but the pallor only makes the beautiful eyes more wistful,
and the sweet red lips more exquisite in contrast.

The girl is tall and slender, with delicately-cut features, and a
wealth of dusky gold-brown hair, and a clear, creamy skin, that shows
every trace of the coursing blood as it flows beneath.  It warms
suddenly now, with a brilliant flush, as she meets her mother's eyes
and listens to her words.  The white slender hand moves to the
toilet-table, and takes from amidst its glittering array a letter
lying there.

"Mother," she says suddenly, "whom do you think I have heard from
this morning?  An old friend of ours."

Mrs. Douglas looks a little startled just for a moment.  Then she
smiles sweetly.

"I am a bad hand at guessing, love.  Pray tell me, if it is of any
importance."

Lauraine looks full at her, still holding the letter in her hand.
"It is from--Keith," she says calmly.

"From Mr. Athelstone!" remarks Mrs. Douglas calmly, but a little
nervous agitation is visible on her face.  "Dear me!  I thought he
had long forgotten us!"

"So did I," answers Lauraine, glancing for an instant at the
superscription.

"But he has not.  You never told me that he had written to you,
mamma, three months ago."

"To me!  Did he really?" and Mrs. Douglas colours ever so little.  "I
forgot all about it.  Yes, now you mention it, he did write me--some
nonsense about his prospects, and how they were improving.  Nothing
to interest me, or you either.  I think you were away."

"I was not away at the time," says Lauraine quietly; "and any news
from Keith would have interested me.  But I suppose you thought it
best to--forget."

Mrs. Douglas looks slightly uncomfortable.  "Dear me, Lauraine," she
says pettishly, "what are you making such a fuss for?  Keith was a
very nice boy, and all that; but you are both grown up now, and that
brother-and-sister business couldn't go on for ever.  What does he
say in that letter?  Is he still in Chicago?"

"He is in England," answers Lauraine, still very quietly; "and he has
been left an immense fortune by some rich, eccentric old Yankee, who
took a great fancy to him.  Also, he is coming here this morning to
call on us.  He is anxious to see me after four years' absence."

Mrs. Douglas turns suddenly very white.  Her eyes flash their eager
scrutiny at her daughter's face.

"What nonsense!  Here--and to-day?  It is impossible.  I must send a
message."

"Stay, mother."  The girl lays her hand on her mother's arm, and her
voice trembles a little.  "Don't send any message.  Let him come.  He
will be here just when we come back from the church.

"I should like to see my old playmate, and receive his
congratulations on such a day as this.  We were always like brother
and sister, you know.  He will be delighted with my future prospects,
I am sure--though I feel rather like the servants who leave an old
place 'to better themselves,' and are not quite sure how they will
get on in the new.  Oh, do let him come!  It is just the one thing
wanting to make my wedding perfect."

Mrs. Douglas looks at her with puzzled wonder.  "I don't quite
understand you," she says uncomfortably.  "You really wish Keith
Athelstone to come here, knowing nothing of the altered
circumstances?  It will be horribly unpleasant.  There will be a
scene, and you know I detest scenes.  They are such bad form."

"There will be no scene," Lauraine says very quietly.  "I think you
know me better than that.  And it is the last thing I ask of you,
before I leave your house to-day.  Let him come."

She speaks calmly enough, but a feverish flush glows in her cheek,
and her eyes look up at her mother's face more in command than in
entreaty.

"Oh! if you put it like that," Mrs. Douglas says, with a pretty
pretence of feeling that Lauraine regards with scornful amusement, "I
cannot deny you.  Let it be so, then.  I only hope he will behave
himself.  He was always so dreadfully impetuous and hot-headed.  That
Spanish mother of his is to blame for that.  Well, my darling, it is
a charming day for your wedding, and if you are ready for breakfast
come down to my boudoir.  You will find me there.  By the way, would
you mind giving me that letter to read?  I should like to see what he
says."

Lauraine hands it to her, and an odd little smile comes over her lips.

"If we had not been _quite_ so much like brother and sister," she
says, "and if you hadn't been quite so determined to marry me this
season, Keith would have been a pretty good match after all."

Mrs. Douglas gives her a sharp glance of scrutiny.  "You are not
foolish enough to regret this boy," she says.  "He could never be
such a match as Sir Francis."

"Regret!  Why should I regret?" says the girl, turning away with a
shrug of her pretty shoulders.  "Regret and I parted company long
ago."

And Mrs. Douglas leaves the room comforted, even if a little puzzled
by her daughter's odd conduct.

"Lauraine was always extraordinary," she says, seating herself in her
boudoir to commence the perusal of this unwelcome letter.  "How
thankful I am that I have secured so excellent a future for her!  I
really thought, at one time I could do nothing with her.  She is so
very odd in some things.  However, Sir Francis will have to manage
her now; she's off my hands, thank goodness!  It is a pity he is such
a brute; but then he is such a good match, and I am so fearfully in
debt.  How on earth I am to pay for the trousseau I don't know; and
nowadays it's not every man who will take a girl without a penny."

Then she gives a sigh of relief, and takes her chocolate from
Henriette, and settles herself comfortably in her chair to the
perusal of this inopportune letter.  As she reads it her brow clouds.
She throws it down at last with an angry exclamation.  "How horribly
unfortunate it should have come to-day!  Still, it's a mercy it did
not come sooner.  What a worry this boy has always been to me!  First
left to my husband's guardianship, and by his death to mine; then all
that nonsense with Lauraine years ago, and the trouble I had to stop
it; and now he turns up rich and independent, and, I suppose, in love
still, though he doesn't say that.  What on earth will he say about
my keeping back that letter three months ago?  But it was such
nonsense, and it would have spoiled my scheme entirely.  I hope to
goodness Lauraine has forgotten him; she seemed to take it very
quietly.  Only when they meet it will really be very awkward.  Dear
me!  I shall need all my self-possession to prevent an _esclandre_.
I must try and see him first and alone.  I suppose he has learnt to
control himself a little by this time.  Poor boy! after all he was
very nice; and what a handsome face--and those eyes!  They would coax
anything out of one, really.  'Bad blue eyes,' his old nurse used to
call them.  Poor old thing! she will go out of her mind with delight
at the bare thought of seeing him again.  I had better send Lauraine
to tell her.  Ah! here she comes."

Lauraine enters, paler than ever, and her mother glances somewhat
anxiously at the pretty, daintily-spread breakfast-table.  Certainly
the poverty Mrs. Douglas speaks of is not outwardly visible in any of
the appointments or surroundings of the house in Grosvenor Street.
Poverty, according to the ideas of fashionable ladies, seems an
extraordinary compound of selfish desires and inability to be wildly
extravagant.

"Here is your letter, dear," she says to Lauraine.  "Really quite a
stroke of luck for poor Keith; I am more than delighted about it.
Perhaps, after all, it is as well he should come here at once, so
after breakfast just run upstairs and tell old nurse.  She will be
overjoyed at the good news.  And now you really must eat something.
You look very pale, and I want you to be spoken of as the prettiest
bride of the season."

Lauraine's lips curl scornfully, but she says nothing, only in her
heart she thinks, "I hope few brides feel as I do to-day!"




CHAPTER II

"Heaven bless you, my bonnie bird," says a trembling voice.

It is an hour and a half later, and Lauraine, in her shimmering satin
robe, and with her bridal wreath upon her brow, stands before a bent,
aged figure, supporting itself on a crutch, looking with dim and most
loving eyes at the beautiful vision.

"Ah," goes on the quavering old voice, "may long life and happiness
be aye yours, my dearie.  It's auld Nannie will pray for it every day
she lives, though she never thoct to see you mated wi' sic a
bridegroom, nor wearing a face so sad on your ain wedding morn.  Ah!
if Maister Keith were here the day he'd be carrying a sair heart in
his breast, I'm thinking."

"Hush, nurse!" said the girl gently.  "I can't stay a minute.  I've
only come to tell you some news.  Master Keith is coming here--coming
to-day; and if he calls when we are at--at church, I want you to see
him, and--and tell him about this.  Will you, nursie?  And make it as
pleasant as you can.  Tell him that I am very happy ... Oh,
nurse!--nurse!"

The brave clear voice gives way, a sob bursts from the girl, and,
regardless of the beautiful dress, the costly lace, she throws
herself at the old woman's feet, and burying her face in her lap,
bursts into tears.

"Whist, whist, my lamb!" cries the old woman, terrified at such
unexpected emotion.  "What for are ye taking on in sic a way?  There,
dry your eyes, my bonnie bairn.  You needn't greet on your
wedding-day, surely; and, oh! if your leddy mither comes and sees
that braw goon all sae crushed and crookit, what will she be saying?
There, there--rest ye quiet now.  What is it ye're greeting for?  Ye
tell't me but yester e'en ye were aye quite content wi' yersel'."

"Ah!" says the girl, rising to her feet, and dashing the tears away
with a half-ashamed energy, "perhaps I did; but then, nursie, that
was yesterday."

"Ye were always a queer bit bairn," says the old woman, looking
proudly and fondly at her beautiful charge.  "Heaven make yer life
gang straight, my dearie.  My heart misgies me sore for you the day,
though I oughtn't to speak sae despondingly.  Still I will e'en hope
for the best, and pray for ye while there's aye a breath left in my
auld body to do it."

"Aye, do," answers the girl softly, as she presses her fresh young
lips to the withered cheek.  "Who knows, nurse, I may need your
prayers yet?"

"Dinna ye speak sae sadly, my bairn," says the old woman.  "Keep up a
brave heart, and aye trust in Providence.  You're a braw bride, my
dearie, and maybe he'll be a gude mon to ye, for didn't he swear to
worship the verra ground ye walk on?"

"Don't let us talk of him," answers the girl pettishly.  "I feel
quite wicked, nurse, when I think of what I am doing.  It seems to
come home to me so terribly now.  But it's too late to help
anything--too late!"

"Dinna say those words; they have a wearyful sound on your bonnie
lips," says the aged woman tenderly.  "Maybe, it will turn out better
than ye think; and the mistress's heart was just set upon it, you
know, and she was always a masterful woman in her way.  Ay--ay, my
bairn, it's ill to greet o'er spilt milk, and all the kye in the
byrne.  There, now, they'll e'en be calling you.  Yes, I'll remember
about Maister Keith, and he'll hear it as gently as my auld lips can
tell him.  Ye may trust Nannie for that.  Run ye doon now, my dearie,
and God bless your bonnie face, and give you a' the happiness He sees
fit."

There is a hurried embrace, and then the girl takes up her long,
floating train in her left hand, and so goes out of the room and down
the stairs, and enters her own chamber once more.

"What a time you have been!" exclaims her mother impatiently; "and
Henriette is waiting to put on your veil.  Sit down; the carriage
will be here directly."

Without a word the girl seats herself before the glass, and the deft
fingers of the French maid fastens the filmy lace on the beautiful
head, and like a transparent cloud it seems to float over and envelop
the lovely figure in its misty folds.

She looks so exquisitely lovely that both mother and maid hold their
breath for one moment, and then murmur rhapsodies of admiration.  The
girl looks quietly at herself, and says nothing.  She knows she is
beautiful; she has proved it often enough in her three seasons of
London life, but to-day she cares very little about that beauty, for
her heart is troubled and her peace has fled.  If only that letter
had not come!

Alas! it is too late now for regrets or repentance.  The moments
hurry on--hurry on as if they would drag her to her doom with flying
wings, not creep along leaden-footed, as her own reluctance would
have had them.  How is it she feels like this now--now when it is so
useless, so vain?  A few days--nay, even a few hours ago, and she was
content enough; but there seems no content possible now, and the
nearer the hour approaches, the greater grows her dread.

"One moment, mother," she says, as Mrs. Douglas turns to leave the
room.  "Henriette, you may go."

The maid retires, and the girl, her face growing very white, comes
close to her mother again, and lays her hand on her arm.

"_Must_ I go through with it?" she says almost wildly.  "Could I not
take back my word--even now?"

"Good heavens! are you mad?" ejaculates Mrs. Douglas.  "Go back at
the last moment, and the breakfast ready, and the carriages waiting,
and every one at the church, and your _trousseau_ not even paid for
on the strength of the credit of this marriage!  My dear Lauraine,
you must be a perfect idiot!"

The girl's face grows cold, her hand falls to her side.  "I dare say
I am," she says bitterly.  "I feel it now."

"Your nerves are shaken--you are getting hysterical," exclaims Mrs.
Douglas.  "Of course it is a very trying time, my dear.  You must
have some sal volatile before you start.  For Heaven's sake don't
make a scene in church, or break down, or do anything ridiculous.
You always are so odd.  Now, any other girl would be thinking how she
looked and----"

"What a good price those looks had fetched," interrupts Lauraine
sarcastically.  "Yes--thank goodness, I have some sense of shame
left.  I do not feel proud of my position to-day, or my part in this
heartless barter."

"Barter!  What makes you use such absurd words!" exclaims her mother
angrily.  "After all I have done for you--after all my sacrifices!"

"Hush!" the girl says wearily, "don't let us discuss that subject
now.  I think none of your sacrifices would look very great before
this of mine, if it came to a question of comparison.  But it is no
matter.  Of course you are right; an _esclandre_ now would be too
terrible."

She turns coldly away, and takes up the beautiful bouquet that Sir
Francis has sent her an hour ago.  The smell of the white roses and
orange blossoms turns her faint and sick.  All her life long, she
thinks, that scent will, fill her with just such shuddering horror as
she feels now.  She lets the bouquet fall and clasps her hands
despairingly together.

"I did not think it would be so bad as this," she moans.  "O God! is
there no escape?"

But in the sunny, luxuriantly appointed chamber all is silence.  A
few minutes after, and down the crimson-carpeted steps a white and
radiant figure floats to the waiting carriage.

"How lovely!  How young!  How beautifully dressed!"

These are the murmurs that fall from an admiring crowd, kept in check
by an officious policeman, as they press around the awning that has
sheltered the bride's passage.  "Lor! if she oughtn't to be happy."

Unconscious of the comments, heedless of the observations, Lauraine
is driven off to the fashionable church where her future husband
awaits as sad and reluctant a bride as ever the martyrdom of Fashion
and the exigencies of Society have sacrificed to the God of Mammon.

The bride's carriage has scarcely disappeared round the corner when a
hansom cab dashes up, and is arrested at the awning.  A young man
jumps out, pays the cabman, and gives a startled glance at the
carpeted steps, the gaping crowd, the unwonted stir and bustle around
the house.  He is not a wedding-guest evidently; there is nothing
very festive about his appearance, but for all that he passes up the
crimson-carpeted steps and into the hall, and there has an interview
with one of the footmen, who, having received instructions on the
matter, conducts the visitor into a small room at the back of the
house, where sits an old woman with a snowy mutch on her head, and a
stick in her hand by which she helps herself to rise.

"My lad, my dear young maister!" she cries, and he comes straight up
and gives her a hearty kiss and a boisterous hug.

"How are you, Nannie?  Why, you look just the same as ever, I do
declare!  Not a day older.  So you see I've come back."

"And a braw welcome to ye, laddie," says the old Scotchwoman, looking
up at the tall well-built figure and handsome face, with a world of
love and pride and admiration in her dim and loving eyes.  "Hech,
sir, but it's strong and fine ye look the day, and none the worse for
all the foreign countries where ye've stayed sae long.  Aye, and it's
proud I am to see ye back.  Sit ye doon, sir--sit ye doon, and tell
me a' the news.  My auld heart's been just sair for word o' ye this
mony a day."

"I will tell you about myself by-and-by, Nannie," the young fellow
says impatiently.  "Meanwhile tell me what's going on here.  Is it a
morning party, or a reception, or some new-fangled social rubbish?
Where's Lauraine?"

"Miss Lauraine is awa' at the kirk," says the old woman gently.
"Canna ye tell what it's a' aboot, dearie?"

"Church"--falters the young man.

Then the idea flashes across him, his bronzed face falls, an evil
light comes into the blue eyes under the shade of their long lashes.
"She's not--not married, Nannie?"

The old woman nods her head and lays her hand gently on his arm.
"Ay, laddie, wedded this morn.  She bade me tell ye, with her love,
that she was happy; that she hoped to see ye, her auld friend and
playmate--and would ye wait here till her return?"

"Happy is she?"  His voice is very cold and stern.  His blue eyes
flash angrily.  Then a short harsh laugh escapes his lips.  "Well,
I'm glad to hear it, though the news is unexpected.  Married--Lorry
married!  God!  What a fool I've been!"

He gets up and walks over to the window and looks out, though nothing
does he see of the objects on which he gazes so intently.  "Married!"
so run his thoughts; "and to-day, too!  Couldn't she have waited?
Couldn't she have told me?  It is three months since I wrote to her
mother, and not a line.  And I--like an idiot--taking silence for
consent, and rushing back here as fast as steam could take me.
Married!  Good Heaven!  I can't believe it.  Lorry, my darling little
playmate, my sweetheart--the girl who vowed to be true to me for
ever--married!  Never to be mine--another man's wife!  O God!  What
am I to do?"

He groans aloud at this juncture, and the sympathizing old woman
comes to him and her heart aches for her nursling's sorrow.  "Dinna
take on so," she says; "ye were but bairns togither; ye could na'
tell how ye're minds would agree in time to come."

He turns away from the window, and walks to his seat and flings
himself moodily back.  It is too early to accept consolation, but he
takes refuse in hot anger.  He rails against womankind--their wiles
and ways, their treachery and fickleness, until poor old Nannie is
bewildered.  His fury vents itself in this manner for the space of a
good half-hour, during which time Nannie listens and agrees and
consoles to the best of her ability, but with very poor results.

Then there comes a stir, a bustle--the noise of feet--the sound of
voices.  Nannie sits up erect and listens.

"They're coming back," she says.

He turns very white again, then looks appealingly at the old woman.

"I can't face them all--it's impossible," he says.  "But if I could
see her alone--just for five minutes.  Oh, Nannie, manage it for me!
I know you can."

"I'll e'en do my best," she says, rising and hobbling away on her
stick, her grey silk gown rustling, her snowy cap, with its lavender
ribbons, carried very erect on her white head.  "But ye'll nae be
cross to the bonnie bairn.  I canna have her frightened and disturbed
on sic a day.  Ye'll mind?"

"Oh yes--yes.  I'll mind!" he says impatiently.  "Only send her here."

He never knows if the time is long or short that he waits--waits with
his heart beating so hard and fast that he can hear it above all
those other sounds without.  Waits in a sort of sullen desperation,
knowing that his pain will be but the fiercer, his anger but the
hotter, for the interview he has demanded.

Then there comes a faint rustle of silken skirts, the door opens,
there is a sweet subtle perfume of orange-flowers and roses, and
before him stands the loveliest vision of womanhood that his eyes
have ever rested on.

One moment he looks at her, and all his anger melts away, and an
unutterable reproach speaks in his eyes, that are "bad" blue eyes no
longer, but only very sad and very haunting.

"Oh, Lauraine!" he says, and his arms go out to clasp her as in the
old sweet days that are gone for ever, and sobbing wildly, the girl
falls upon his breast.




CHAPTER III

A moment, and she remembers!  With flushed cheeks and tear-wet eyes
she wrenches herself away, and looks up at the face of her old
playmate.  "Oh, Keith!" she says, "I--I was so glad to see you!"

The poor pitiful pretence does not blind him.  He looks at her
sternly.  "Indeed?  And may I ask for an explanation of your conduct?
I think it is due to me.  Why have you broken faith?"

She turns deadly pale.

"We were never really engaged," she stammers, "and all those years
you never wrote, and I thought----"

"You did _not_!" he says fiercely.  "You know me better than that.  I
am no saint, but I am no mawkish lover either, to fly from one
woman's feet to another, and pour out love vows at fancy.  You knew I
would be true, Lauraine, and you--you have been false."

She trembles, and is silent.  He looks at her longingly--thirstily,
his eyes taking in all the beauty he so well remembers--all the
changes time has wrought.  It maddens him to gaze upon her--to think
she is so utterly lost to him.  He feels there is nothing so cruel,
so fierce, he could not say to her at this moment, if only to inflict
upon her some of the pain, the agony that throbs in his own heart,
and runs riot in his own veins.

"You are like all your sex," he says, in a low deep voice of intense
wrath, but a voice that makes her quiver with the mingled rapture,
dread, and fear of its memories.  "Truth and constancy are unknown to
you.  Did I need any sign or word to keep me true?  No.  I said I
loved you, and would love you to my life's end; and so I shall, God
help me!  Oh, child! why have you done this?"

"I was driven to it," says the girl desperately.  "You cannot
understand--you never would, if I spent hours in telling you--how it
has all come about.  Oh, how I hate myself!--and yet----  Oh, Keith,
say you forgive me!  Let us part friends.  Don't break my heart with
your reproaches.  In the life before me I shall have misery enough to
bear.  Give me some kind word now."

"I will not," he says fiercely.  "I would not be such a hypocrite.  I
could almost hate you, only that I know I love you too much for that
yet.  But I will not be hypocrite enough to say I forgive you, or
wish you well, or any such d----d humbug."

"Keith!" bursts from the pale, trembling lips.

"Yes, I mean it," he goes on more wildly, for her beauty maddens him,
and he is longing with all the wildest and most passionate longing of
his hot-blooded southern nature to fold that lovely figure in his
arms, to rain kisses on the sweet quivering lips, to call her
his--his own--his love, though a hundred laws of right and honour
barred the way.  "I mean it--and I hope my misery will haunt your
life, brought as it is by your own hand.  To-day you have killed the
best part of me.  Whatever happens in the future lies at your door."

"Do not say that," she implores.

"I will.  If I go to the dogs you have driven me there, and you know
it.  I have loved you since I was a boy--since we played together in
our childhood.  I have been cold to all temptations, to all that
would make me less worthy of you, simply because that love lay like a
charm upon my heart and kept all evil away.  I have worked and
toiled, and now, when Fortune smiles--when even your mercenary mother
might be content with my prospects--I come to claim you and find
you--married.  By heaven, Lauraine, I could strangle you, as you
stand there with your innocent face looking back to mine, and fling
you dead into the arms of the brute who has bought you!"

"Oh! cease for pity's sake," implored the girl, and her hands go up
to her face and shut out that angry one before her, with the
lightning-flashes of wrath in the blue eyes, and that agony of soul
in every quivering feature.  "If you only knew how sorry I am--how I
pity you--myself----"

Her voice breaks.  For a moment everything is forgotten--her strange
absence--her mother's uneasiness--the wondering comments of the
guests--of these she never thinks.  Just for one single moment they
stand face to face, and soul to soul, and see before them the awful
shipwreck of two young despairing lives!

"Pity me!  Ah, you well may," cries Keith, softening a little at the
low, tender voice, and the misery on the young, white face.  "God
knows I need it.  Go--go, while I have strength to let you.  If you
knew what a hell is in my heart at this present moment, you would
wonder I could bid you leave me now.  It would be easier to kill you
than know I send you back to your--husband."

She shudders as he says those words.  He has turned away, so that he
may not see the fatally fair face--the drooping grace of the lovely
figure round which the costly satin falls in gleaming folds.  She
moves away; then looks back.  His head is bent down on his arms--a
sob shakes the strong young frame.  It goes to her heart like a
knife.  Impulsively she approaches, and lays one little hand
caressingly on his arm.

"Dear Keith, don't grieve--don't fret for me.  You are right.  I was
never worth your love--never!  I deserve all the unhappiness that
Fate can bring.  But first say you forgive me this once; I cannot
bear to part in anger from you."

Dangerously soft, dangerously sweet is the pretty voice.  It goes
straight to the aching heart to which she appeals.  With a strong
effort he conquers his emotion and looks up--how haggard, how altered
is the bright young face she remembers!

"I was a brute to say what I did just now," he exclaims, with rapid
contrition.  "I am half-mad with pain.  Yes, Lorry, I will try and
forgive you, though it is horribly hard.  You are not a man; you
don't know--oh God! how _can_ I bear it!"

She trembles violently as she stands beside him; the folds of her
dress sweep across his feet, the faint, sweet perfume of the
orange-flowers steals over his senses.  He bows his burning forehead
down upon her hands, and for a moment is silent too.

"I _must_ go," whispers the girl desperately, at last.  "Good-bye,
Keith--darling Keith.  For my sake, try and bear up now; and oh,
promise me you won't carry out your awful threat; you won't go to
the--bad."

"I can't promise any such thing," he says, relapsing into gloom and
anger once more.  "You don't know what you've done to me.  I never
was particularly good, and if I tried to be, it was simply for your
sake.  Now my anchor is gone, and I am cut adrift.  Whatever evil I
do lies at your door, as I said before!"

"You are cruel--cowardly to say that!" she cries quickly.  "I have
not been blameless, but I have not been false to you in my
heart--that I know, and if you had only told me, only written----"

"Your mother made me promise I would hold no communication with you
for four years!" he says eagerly.  "At the end of that time my
prospects began to brighten.  This Mr. Hezekiah Jefferson took me up,
and then promised to leave me all his fortune.  He was rich as
Croesus, and hadn't a relative in the world.  I told her all this,
and begged her to tell you.  I had no answer from either.  Then old
Hezekiah died, and I jumped clear into two million dollars.  I rushed
home as soon as I could put things square, and get here--just too
late!  Do you expect me to sit down like a tame cat, and console
myself by saying it can't be helped?  I think you know my nature
better than that?"

She drew a long, quivering sigh.  "If I had but known?" she says.

"So your mother never told you?  I was a fool to trust her.  Women
don't seem to have more honour than they have constancy.  But it's no
use going over the old ground.  You are lost to me, and I don't care
two straws what becomes of me now.  There, I see you are impatient to
be off.  Good-bye, don't let me detain you from your--husband!"

He rises as he speaks, and all the old evil light comes back to his
eyes and his face.  The girl looks sadly, reproachfully at him; she
is white and trembling--this scene has tried her terribly.

"Shall I--shall we see you again?" she asks faintly.

"No," he says, drawing his brows together in an angry frown.  "I am
not going to intrude myself as a spectator of your happiness.  I
shall take myself off at once."

"And will you not be--friends?  Am I never to see you?" she says with
a foolish longing that he may not pass utterly out of her life--a
longing she feels to be wrong, and yet cannot refrain from expressing.

A sudden light flashes up into the young man's face, then fades, and
it grows black and thunderous once more.  "If I see you again it will
either be a great deal better, or a great deal--worse--for us both,"
he says huskily.  "You had better not tempt me, Lauraine."

A great wave of crimson flushes her face.  Her eyes sink before the
sudden fire and passion that leap up beneath those dusky lashes of
his.

"Good-bye!" she says again, and holds out her hand.  "We do
part--friends?"

He hesitates for a second's space, then a cold, strange smile comes
to his lips.  "Certainly--the best of friends, Lady Vavasour."  The
door opens as those mocking words escape his lips.  Before them
stands Mrs. Douglas, her face white and anxious.

"I am just coming, mamma," says Lauraine calmly.  "I cannot prevail
upon Mr. Athelstone to join us at breakfast!"

"So pleased to see you, my dear Keith!" says Mrs. Douglas sweetly.
"Only such an unfortunate time for a visit.  Impossible to hear all
your news.  We must have a long, quiet chat together when all this is
over.  Lauraine, my dear, you must really come back to the
drawing-room.  Can't we prevail upon you, Keith?"

"No, you can't," says Keith rudely.  "I have been so long away from
fashionable society that I am afraid I shouldn't get on with your
guests.  But I am quite ready to have a chat with you, Mrs. Douglas,
when you can favour me with your company.  I think we have something
besides news to discuss."

"Most happy--delighted, I'm sure," answers Mrs. Douglas vaguely.  "I
will write and tell you what day, my dear Keith.  So many engagements
just now, you know."

She sails out of the room, with Lauraine beside her.

"Really, Keith has become quite American," she says complainingly.
"So altered--so quite too coarse, and all that.  It makes me shudder
to hear him speak.  He will be just like the Bradshaw Woollffes, I
suppose.  What a time you were with him, Lauraine--such bad form, you
know!  However, I am glad he's going.  It would have been quite
unpleasant if he had stayed."

Lauraine draws her hand away from her mother's arm, and looks her
steadily in the face.

"You are right," she says, "it _would_."

Mrs. Douglas feels anything but comfortable as she meets that cold
gaze.  But in her heart she says:

"How fortunate that he did not come sooner--even yesterday!"

She almost shudders as she thinks of the "slip" that might have been
between the costly cup she had been occupied in raising, and the lips
to which it had been successfully carried.  "All is safe now,
though," she thinks.  "But how thankful I shall be when she is fairly
off.  Was ever such a wedding day as this?"

And then she sails into her splendid rooms, and receives
congratulations, and flutters about in graceful agitation, and feels
that if ever a mother deserves the victor's crown of matrimonial
success she deserves it.

Of course all danger is over now.  Do not all novels end with a
wedding?  Are not all Society's daughters considered settled and
established once the ring is on, and the rice and slippers thrown?
Still, as she looks at her daughter's face, an odd little
uncomfortable feeling thrills her heart.  There is something so
strange, so _dead_-looking about bright, beautiful Lauraine.

But she is married--safely married now.  What is there to fear in the
future, to regret in the past?  Ay, _what_?




CHAPTER IV

A cold, wet afternoon in March.  But a few days ago people believed
in spring.  There was abundance of sunshine, of blue sky, of tender,
venturesome birds; there had been piles of violets and primroses in
the flower-girls' baskets, as they moved about the London streets; a
breath of genuine spring-time in the soft air; but now all was cold
and bleak and drear once more, and people went back shiveringly to
fires and furs, and abused the treacherous English climate to their
hearts' content.  The external cold and dreariness were shut out
effectually in a house in fashionable Mayfair.  A sort of small
drawing-room, opening off the grandeur and luxury of a larger one; a
room with a hundred costly knick-knacks scattered about, with velvet
draperies, and filled with hothouse flowers, and over which the
fire-gleams played.

A silver tea-urn stands hissing on a low table by the fire--dainty
cups stand beside it.  All is warm, fragrant, pleasant to the eye and
the senses, and a silvery babble of women's voices adds life to the
scene.

"What has become of your young friend, Mr. Athelstone?" asks a
pretty, fair woman, as she puts down her cup, and turns to the
presiding goddess of the ceremonies--a big, imposing-looking woman,
magnificently dressed.

"He's in Rome still," she answers, with a strong American accent.
"Means to stay there, too, I surmise--leastways, until the Vavasours
come to town.  Wonderful pretty woman Lady Vavasour--Lady Lauraine,
as the poetry man calls her.  You know that story?"

"No," chime in two or three voices.  "What was it?"

"Well, he was an Italian," says the lady, who rejoices in the name of
Mrs. Bradshaw B. Woollffe, "and very poor, I believe, living in a
garret, and that sort, but a right down poet, so every one says
_now_, and Lady Vavasour found him out, and had his book published,
and it took like wildfire and of course he's eternal grateful to her,
and he wrote something on her--called her 'My Lady Lauraine'--sounds
pretty, don't it--and the name was taken up, and in Rome no one
called her anything else.  She was quite the sensation of the day
there; but she _is_ wonderful pretty, and no pumpkins about _that_."

"She's been married--let me see----"

"Two years, just upon.  She's very delicate--that's why they went to
Rome.  Chest, or lungs, or something.  An almighty pretty baby she's
got too, and don't she seem fond of it!  As a rule, mothers nowadays
don't even bother their heads about their children--'ceptin' to dress
'em like dolls, and take 'em out as a show in their carriages."

One or two fashionable mothers present wince a little at Mrs.
Bradshaw B. Woollffe's outspoken opinion, and feel more than ever
convinced that she is dreadfully vulgar, and really it would be quite
impossible to know her, only she is so amazingly rich.

"And she and Mr. Athelstone are great friends, you say?" questions
another voice.

"Yes," answers Mrs. Bradshaw B. Woollffe shortly.  "Knew each other
as children; brought up as brother and sister, and all that."

"How very charming," simpers an inane-looking model of fashion,
settling her bonnet strings, and wishing that some men would take it
into their heads to drop in and relieve the monotony of feminine
society.  "_That_ sort of relationship is so free and easy, and no
one can say anything.  But I heard that the Vavasours are coming back
for the season?"

"So they are--at least Keith told me so when he last wrote.  I knew
him in New York," she added explanatorily.  "He is a nice boy;
deserves his luck, too.  Uncommon rich, ain't he.  My! two million
dollars ain't bad; and I'm not sure if it ain't more.  Old Hezekiah
Jefferson was a relation of my niece.  He was a warm man, he was, and
this boy's got all."

"He ought to marry," suggests a Belgravian matron, who has two
daughters "out," and a third budding into bloom, and becoming
obtrusively anxious to show herself among the rosebud "garden of
girls," who blossom in the London season.

"Marry?"  And Mrs. Bradshaw B. Woollffe laughs.  "I guess he don't
think of that yet awhile.  He's too young, and he likes his liberty;
he's a bit skittish, too, but that's not much account as some go.
Marryin' will be more than he'll care about for a long time to come,
even though the girls do go after him like squir'ls after cobs.  But
then he's uncommon handsome, too."

"Perhaps his _friend_, Lady Lauraine, as you call her, would object
to his settling down?" suggests the Belgravian matron, with a little
more acidity than sweetness in her well-modulated voice.

Mrs. Bradshaw B. Woollffe puts down her teacup, and looks straight at
the speaker,

"In our country," she remarks, "people say right down what they
think.  I don't know what you mean, but I guess.  Lady Lauraine is a
good woman and a good wife, and she'd be glad enough to see her old
playfellow settled and happy; but, you see it's difficult for a rich
fellow to know whether it's himself or his money that the girl takes
him for, and I suspect Keith would like to be sure on that subject
before he jumped into matrimony."

There is a momentary hush among the fair tea-drinkers; but all are
agreed in their minds that Americans have an unpleasantly coarse way
of putting things.

"It's four years ago since I came to Eu-rope," resumed Mrs. Bradshaw
B. Woollffe.  "I've got more spry about your ways than I was.  But
there's one thing I don't hold with, and that is that you don't
believe in your women.  Our Amurcan girls, now, go to their balls,
and parties, and skatin' matches, and junketings, and the young
fellows see them home and 'squire them about, and we don't think no
harm of it; and as for scandal, why, we'd call a man a blackguard
who'd say a word against a girl's character for goin' about with
another man.  It's a point of honour with _them_ to treat 'em just as
respectfully as if a hundred mothers and chaperons were looking on.
Now, here in Europe you're all in such a mortal funk, not only with
your gals, but with your married women.  You don't seem to believe in
such a thing as friendship.  Why, if a man and a woman like to talk
to each other there's a scandal directly!  I surmise it's your way,
but it bothers me, that it does."

There is a little titter among the fair worshippers at the shrine of
tea and riches.

"Dear Mrs. Woollffe, you do say such odd things; but I think you
quite mistake.  We are certainly particular with our girls.  We must
be.  Society would be scandalized if they went about in the
free-and-easy fashion of their American cousins.  But with married
women it is quite different.  We are really _free_--more free, I
think, than your countrywomen; and as for _friendship_--dear me, that
is quite allowable--quite!"

"Of course," chime in several voices in the background, for all the
attention of the conclave is aroused now.  "But then there are
friendships, _and_ friendships."

"Exactly," says Mrs. Bradshaw B. Woollffe drily.  "It is the '_and_'
ones I mean.  How is it you know so well who may not look at the
halter, and who may steal the horse?"

"It is--it is somewhat difficult to explain," hesitates the pretty
fair woman, who has a charming "friendship" of her own on hand just
now, and is anxious it should be considered as blameless as, of
course, it is.

Mrs. Bradshaw Woollffe laughs loudly.

"I surmise it is," she answers, "something like the people one can't
know and the people one can.  I suppose as long as one's got a pretty
big pile, one can do anything."

"But to return to Mr. Athelstone," says Belgravia, a little
uncomfortably.  "Don't you really know when he'll come back?"

"Perhaps I do," answers Mrs. Woollffe, with an odd little smile.
"He's just promised to come and stay with me the end of the month.  I
have a niece--a very pretty girl she is, too--coming over from N'
York, and as they knew each other in Amurca, I thought it would be
company like for them to be together."

Horror and consternation fill the heart of the Belgravian matron.
The prospects of her two daughters who are "out," and the blushing
_ingénue_ in prospective, flee further and further back into the
regions of disappointment.

What an odious woman!  What a horrible woman!  What on earth does she
mean?  Oh, if only she were poor, and if only the Earl of Longleat
hadn't taken her up, how she would crush her now beneath aristocratic
scorn.  But--well, it never does _quite_ to fall out with so much
money, and lose all the dinners, balls, and receptions which the
wealthy widow gives right royally in the season.  So the ire is
smothered and the frowns dispelled, and only the sweetest of phrases
issue from lips that are absolutely trembling with hatred and
disgust.  The rooms grow emptier and emptier.  The last visitor
leaves, and Mrs. Bradshaw B. Woollffe leans back in her most
comfortable chair, and laughs softly to herself in the glow of the
firelight.

"We don't raise _that_ sort down our way," she says, "and I'm glad of
it.  Well, I think I riled 'em with that bit about Anastasia, and
it's no cram either.  She is uncommon pretty, and ought to take.  I
shouldn't mind getting a bid for her, only she's that sweet on Keith
I'm afraid it won't be easy.  But he don't care a red herring for
her--_that_ I know.  I wonder what's become of the girl he told me of
in N' York that fall.  He ain't married her, and when I asked him
why, he cut up mighty rough, and as good as told me to mind my own
business.  But I like that Keith.  I wish he seemed a bit happier,
that I do.  He's not near so spry and lively as he used to be.  How
all these women are after him!  Guess I got a rise out of them _that_
time.  My, if they knew he was coming here to-night!  'Taint none of
their business though, and I don't mean it to be.  I think I'll keep
the dragons off him better'n most.  I and--Anastasia!"

And she laughs again, a pleasant, cheery laugh, not with any
insincere modulation or false ring like the laugh of Society.  But
with all her vulgarities and eccentricities, Mrs. Bradshaw B.
Woollffe is a genuine woman.

She pours herself out another cup of tea, and looks complacently
round her pretty room; and as she looks, there comes the sound of a
step on the stairs, and the door is thrown open, and a tall figure
comes straight to her amidst the obscurity, and she springs up to
welcome him with a cordiality so genuine that Society would doubtless
call it vulgar.

"Keith, my dear boy--so you've come.  I'm _real_ glad to see you,
that I am."

Her visitor takes the two hands she extends him, and returns their
warm pressure.  Then she forces him into a chair by the fire, and
stirs the logs into a blaze, and brings him some tea, and fusses
about him in a pleasant, genial, womanly fashion that is all her own.

Keith Athelstone accepts her attentions with laughing opposition
against the amount of trouble she is taking; but on the whole he
likes it, and he likes her too, for she has been a kind friend to him
in days gone by, when he was only poor and struggling--a stranger in
a strange land, not yet having "struck ile" in the way of fortune and
success.

"And so you have really left Rome?" says Mrs. Bradshaw B. Woollffe at
last, when her guest is reclining lazily in his chair, and has begged
her not to ring for lights or disturb the cosy solitude of the room.
"And how are the Vavasours?"

A little change is visible in the face of the young man--a face
strangely altered in these two years.  The features are handsome as
ever, but there is a haggard, worn look about them, and the blue eyes
are feverish and dim, and heavy shadows lie beneath the long dark
lashes.

Those eyes and lashes are the greatest beauty in Keith Athelstone's
face, and now that haunting look of sadness gives them tenfold more
attraction than they possessed before.  "They are quite well," he
says, after a brief pause; "they come to town next week."

"I wonder you did not wait and come with them."

"Lady Vavasour did not wish it," he answers quietly.

Mrs. Woollffe gives him a quick glance and is silent.

"I've had a troop of women here," she says presently.  "Glad you
didn't come in the midst of their chatter.  My, they'll be after you
like flies after molasses this season, Keith!  Take care you aren't
married in spite of yourself."

"Married?" his voice rings out with angry energy; "not if I know it.
I _hate_ women."

"Hate 'em?--that's queer," remarks Mrs. Bradshaw B. Woollffe.
"Something's wrong with you, then.  Boys at your age aren't
women-haters for nothing."

"I mean, of course, those husband-hunting creatures," says Keith
apologetically.  "Why can't they let a fellow alone, I wonder?"

"Can't say, I'm sure, unless it's just their malice drives 'em on one
against the other, and each tries to be foremost with the traps and
gins.  When a man's got money, I suppose they think it ain't right
unless he shares it with a female.  And there's such an almighty lot
of women in Great Britain.  Nice enough, too, some of 'em; I like 'em
better'n Amurcans.  They've a real good time of it out here, too.
When we get married, we're shelved--done for.  We let the young 'uns
have their time; but, lor' bless me, _here_ the married women seem to
have the best of the fun, and are as skittish as colts, even when
they're forty."

"Yes, that's so," answered Keith.  "In these days married women--so
long as they're pretty--command more admiration and attention than
the girls.  The fact of being appropriated seems to lend them a
greater charm.  Perhaps, though, men think they're safer.  The
mothers make such dead running, you know, and if you dance twice with
a girl, suspect 'intentions.'"

"It's bad, though," says Mrs. Woollffe, shaking her head.  "Bad for
Society--bad for men--bad for the girls, too.  They'll marry the
first man who asks them, because they think they'll have more real
freedom afterwards.  But what sort of wives and mothers will they
make?"

"Those are secondary points of consideration"--sneers Keith, and his
face looks hard and almost cruel now, as the flames leap up and frame
it in their sudden brightness.  "Old-fashioned ideas like truth and
constancy, and all that."

"Come, I can't have you getting cynical," says his friend
good-humouredly.  "You're too young, and I hate to hear young fellows
like yourself railing against women.  It don't seem right, somehow.
What do you know of them?  They're mighty queer creatures, and would
puzzle the wisest man; but all the same, they're not all downright
bad, and you mustn't judge the whole bale from a poor sample."

Keith says nothing.  His eyes go back to the fire, and a cloud
darkens his brow.  He knows in his own heart that he hates all women,
only because he loves one--too well.




CHAPTER V

In the dressing-room of her Park Lane mansion a woman stands dressed
for the evening.

Her face is lovely, her toilet exquisite, a rain of diamonds seems to
glitter about her; but there is no gladness in the eyes that gaze at
their own reflection, and an unnatural gravity and sadness seem to
sit on the white brow and round the soft young lips.

It is the face of Lauraine--Lady Vavasour.

A maid enters with a bouquet and a note, and gives them to her.  "Sir
Francis desired me to say he was waiting, my lady," she says
respectfully.

"I will be down immediately.  You can take my cloak," answers her
mistress.

The maid leaves the room, and Laura opens the note and reads the few
lines it contains.  Her face does not change except to grow even
sadder for a moment.  Then she tears up the letter, and taking the
flowers in her hand, sweeps slowly away.  She moves across the richly
carpeted corridor, and enters another room facing her own.  It is
dimly lighted, and all its draperies are pure white, and the
furniture of satinwood.  In one corner stands a little cot, the lace
curtains looped back with pale azure ribbons.  A woman rises at her
entrance, and stands up respectfully.  Lauraine passes her, and goes
over to the little bed and looks down with eyes full of love
unutterable at its inmate.

A child lies there asleep.  Soft, dusky rings of hair curl round the
broad, white brow--the cheeks are flushed like a rose--the tiny
scarlet mouth is half open--the little hands lie outside the snowy
coverlet.  Lauraine's face grows transfigured as she looks on that
baby form; such love--such rapture--such pure, holy, exquisite joy
irradiates it!  She stoops down and presses her lips to the baby
brow--takes one long, idolizing look at the cherubic loveliness that
is her dearest earthly treasure, and then whispers some parting
injunctions to the nurse and leaves the room.

"How long you have been!  What a deuce of a time you women do take to
put your gowns on," grumbles her husband, as he meets her at the
bottom of the stairs.  "The horses have been standing out there in
the cold for more than half an hour."

Lauraine makes a sign to her maid to put on her wraps, and then
follows her husband out to the carriage.  He has not looked at
her--he has not noticed one detail of the exquisite toilette--his
voice in addressing her is harsh and impatient, and they have been
married but two years.  Yet the coldness and indifference she now
receives is ten thousand times preferable, she thinks, to the frantic
passion that he had once bestowed.  He had been mad to have her, and
he had won her!  Now--well, now that infatuation looked as absurd as
it had once been imperative.  It is a man's nature; it always has
been and always will be so.

Lauraine too feels strangely changed.  She seems to have grown cold,
hard, indifferent to everything.  These two years seem like ten.
This is her first season in London since she married, and she looks
upon it as a duty enforced, and with not one throb of pleasure or
anticipation.  She is young, rich, and very lovely; but she carries a
heavy heart within that beautiful bosom, and knows that the one great
error of her life is ever demanding compensation.

Six months ago she and Keith Athelstone met again.  He had gone back
to New York after her marriage, to settle his affairs, and for
eighteen months she had neither seen nor heard anything of him.  When
they met in Rome she had been startled and afraid of the change
wrought in so brief a time.  He looked years older.  The bright,
genial, sunny temper that had given him so great a charm was now
sullen, uncertain, and bitter.  He was restless, extravagant, and
capricious.  Much that she had heard of him pained and annoyed her
deeply; but she scarcely dared remonstrate for fear of being met with
a sneer or a reproach.  Her husband took an unaccountable fancy to
the young fellow, and had him constantly at their house; but it
frightened Lauraine to see the hatred and contempt that at times
flashed out in Keith's eyes and voice against the man who called him
friend.  No word of the past--no allusion to that wedding-morning of
hers--ever passed between the young man and herself.  She almost
hoped he had forgotten his boyish passion--would be content to accept
the friendship she had once proffered him, and he had rejected so
scornfully.

For herself nothing seemed to signify much now.  The whole tenderness
of her nature spent itself on her child.

If she could have had her way, she would have liked to live in the
quiet old Northumbrian house which was her husband's, and there given
herself exclusively up to the care and teaching of her boy.  But such
a wild idea, was of course, scouted and ridiculed.

Her husband was proud of her in a way--proud of the sparkling beauty,
the dainty grace, the mind and manners of the woman he had made his
wife.  She would never be fast or vulgar, or think only of conquests
and admiration, and drag his name through the mire of scandal.  No;
she would always be _safe_--that he felt, and if he had grown tired
of her he was determined that the world should see and admire her,
and applaud his choice.  It would gratify his vanity, just as it had
done in Rome, where she had been courted and worshipped and eulogized
everywhere as "Lady Lauraine."

The carriage rolls smoothly and swiftly on.  Lauraine leans back,
with her eyes gazing dreamily out at the lighted streets.  Her
husband breaks the silence at last.

"I want you to be specially civil to Lady Jean," he says abruptly.
"You were very stand-offish when she called on you the other day.
She's the most popular woman in London, and the prettiest.  You two
ought to be friends."

"I don't like her," answers Lauraine coldly.

"Don't like her!" he sneers.  "No, of course not.  That's just like a
woman.  The moment a man praises one of your own sex to you, it's
quite sufficient reason for you to dislike her.  Pray, what's your
objection?"

Lauraine colours faintly.

"She is loud and fast.  She ridicules every good and honest feeling,
and I think she is very malicious."

"The secret of her success perhaps," laughs her husband.  "People are
afraid of her sharp tongue.  _Tant mieux_.  But she is at all events
a woman one would not get tired of.  Few know how to make themselves
more agreeable."

"To men, perhaps."

"Well, that's paying us a great compliment.  A woman making herself
agreeable to women is taking a great deal of trouble for no purpose
unless, of course, they have the _entrée_ where she has not.  But
Lady Jean goes everywhere."

"And Lady Jean's husband?" asks Lauraine.

Sir Francis laughs.  "Well, one doesn't see much of him certainly.
But he's worth nearly a million, for all that.  The earl wouldn't
have let his daughter marry him if he hadn't been."

"Was Lady Jean poor?"

"Very poor.  The Earl of Killery had six daughters.  She was the
youngest, and the only one who has married.  She's been married six
years now."

"You knew her before--before----" hesitates Lauraine.

"Before I married you?  Oh, yes.  We were very good friends always.
That's why I hope you and she will hit it off.  She'll be of great
use to you."

Lauraine is silent.  In her own mind she thinks she shall never be
able to "hit it off," as Sir Francis expresses it.  She and Lady Jean
are totally opposite in many respects, and she has that instinctive
antipathy to her which a pure and high-principled woman often
conceives for one whose morals are lax, whose nature is coarse, whose
views, tastes and opinions are utterly antagonistic to her own.

The carriage stops at last.  They get out and are marshalled up a
crowded staircase and into yet more crowded rooms.  Lady Jean Saloman
receives them cordially.  She looks radiant.  If not a positively
beautiful woman she at least is a woman who always contrives to make
herself immediately noticed even amidst beauty.  She is very tall;
dresses superbly: wears jewels fit for an empress, and is too much a
woman of the world not to know the worth of popularity.

Her own birth and breeding were irreproachable, and she could be
_grande dame_ to the tips of her toes when she pleased.  But when the
part did not suit, she varied it according to her own fancy.  She was
not a young woman now--that is to say, she was on the wrong side of
thirty; but she was handsome and dashing-looking, and had a host of
admirers, and did pretty much as she liked with her husband, who was
a dark Jewish-looking man, rarely seen in her drawing-rooms, but
known to have carried many wonderful speculations to a successful
issue, and to have so much money that even her wildest extravagances
could be indulged without fear of consequences.

Lady Jean was on the very highest pinnacle of social success at
present, and the novelty amused her, though the fact of being
constantly _en grande tenue_ was rather a bore, and there was a dash
of Bohemianism in her character, due to her Irish blood, which would
have vent occasionally.  The said element, however, was kept
carefully out of sight of the very great and exclusive personages who
received her as one of themselves.  She slipped into her two
characters as occasion demanded, and played them so skilfully that
her respective audiences applauded each with rapture, and took each
as the real thing.

Those outside that magic pale of "exclusiveness" sighed enviously as
they saw her leave their ranks from time to time, and soar upwards to
that purer and rarer stratum of the social atmosphere which their
lungs were deemed unfit to breathe.  "We are quite as good as she,"
they would murmur discontentedly.

And so they doubtless were, only they had not learnt her secret--the
secret of keeping on good terms with Society, and yet indulging in a
hundred little frolicsome escapades by way of variety, without
offending the strait-laced prejudices and high-toned morality of the
one set, or debarring herself from the questionable amusements of the
other.

To-night Lady Jean is very gracious, very affable, very dignified;
her rooms are thronged with great personages.  A list of nothing but
titles will fill the pages of the _Court Journal_ that describes her
"reception" to-morrow, and she feels that she is a person of much
consequence.  Lady Vavasour looks at her with more curiosity than she
has yet evinced.  Her husband's words have aroused her interest.

Lady Jean is attired in some wonderful combination of deep ruby and
old gold that suits her dark beauty to perfection.  Lauraine gazes at
her with a sort of wonder.  It has never struck her before that the
woman is so marvellously handsome.

They pass on with the rest of the crowd after a few words.  In one of
the rooms a great singer is singing.  Lauraine stands and listens.
Some one comes up to her and offers his hand.  She just glances up
and smiles as she takes it.  Neither of them speaks.  Only two eager
blue eyes take in every detail of her dress and appearance, and give
so glad a welcome in their glance that perhaps it is as well she does
not see it.

The song is over.  The crowd move about.  Keith Athelstone bends
close to Lauraine.  "Let me find you a seat," he says.  "These rooms
are stifling."

Lauraine nods and takes his arm.  Her husband has gone back to the
staircase and--Lady Jean.

"I hardly know any one here," she says at last.  "It is the first
time I have come to the house."

"Is it?" answers Keith, rather indifferently.  "There are heaps of
big swells here, I believe.  Pity Mrs. Bradshaw Woollffe can't be
among them.  How delighted she would be!"

"How long do you stay with her?" asked Lauraine.

"I scarcely know.  I am looking out for a set of rooms; but I haven't
found anything I like yet."

"Are you so hard to please?"

"I don't think so.  But I must have lots of room and something green
to look at.  I wonder if I dare ask your assistance in the furnishing
line.  I'm afraid I shall make an awful muddle of it."

Lauraine laughs.  "Are you going in for the æsthetic
style--peacock-blue, and sage-green and yellow?  Oh, yes--I shall be
delighted to help you.  We'll drive to Morris's and select things
together."

_Together_!  His heart gives a quick throb as he hears that word.  He
wonders whether she has forgotten.  He feels a little impatient of
this calm friendliness with which she always treats him.  She ignores
the past so utterly that at times he feels impelled to say or do
something desperate, if only to awaken her from that calm, and know
that she can feel still.

The attraction she had had for him is potent as ever.  All his rage
and indignation had not killed it--the barrier in his path seemed but
to rouse it to fresh life when they met again.

No woman in the world was to him what Lauraine was.  No woman ever
would be, he felt assured.  Had he been wise he would have shunned
her presence so long as he knew it could exercise its old potent
witchery.

But who is wise that loves?

"She is quite safe," he would tell himself restlessly.  "And for
myself--if it hurts, it is my own fault.  I must see her sometimes."

He had grown to look upon Lauraine as martyred to her mother's
selfishness.  He knew she had never cared for her husband.  He saw
that even in this short space of time they were drifting
slowly--surely apart.

"And I would have made her so happy!" he thought to himself in those
hours of solitude when the maddening recollection of her face was
always before him.

He almost hated her at such times; hated her because he could not
forget her, and all his riches seemed nothing in comparison with
just--her love.

She was quite unsuspicious as yet.  She thought he must have got over
his boyish infatuation long since, and that their friendship was as
real to him as to her.  He was careful enough not to undeceive her,
for he dreaded above all the sentence of banishment she would
inevitably pronounce.  She had grown so much colder and prouder since
her marriage, he thought.

The seat is found, and side by side they sit, talking of a hundred
different things that for them have a common interest.  To Lauraine
it is the most natural thing in the world that Keith should be beside
her, and she can always talk to him as she can to no one else.  Yet
there is that about her which keeps all dangerous allusions in check,
which sometimes chills and sometimes awes the wild, hot, young heart
beating so restlessly by her side.  He tries a hundred times to
speak, and yet--he dares not.  "She would never forgive," he thinks
to himself.  "It would seem almost an insult now."

For he knows that there is one tie which sanctifies her heart, and
sets her far above the touch and fear of a selfish passion.  It is
her love for her child.


"Your wife and her old playfellow seem devoted to each other,"
remarks Lady Jean, as she leans on Sir Francis Vavasour's arm, and
makes the tour of her splendid rooms.

He looks carelessly at the couple in question.  They are sitting in
an alcove, the soft hues of the hangings and the rich tints of
flowers framing them in with a glow of colour.  Keith is bending over
Lauraine; he holds her bouquet in his hand, and toys restlessly with
the fragrant blossoms.  Her face is softly flushed, the long dark
lashes sweep her cheek, a little smile, half tender, half sad, plays
about her lips.

"What a handsome couple they would have made," continues Lady Jean
blandly.  "Just seem suited for each other.  You ought to feel
flattered, _mon ami_, that you carried the day."

"Pshaw! they are like brother and sister," mutters Sir Francis
impatiently.

"Are they?  How very charming!  Only brothers and sisters as a rule
don't seem quite so devoted to each other.  But, of course, the
relationship and the 'seeming' it are two very different things.  Do
you know, I think your wife is very beautiful."

"You are very good to say so."

Lady Jean laughs.  "My flattery is quite sincere.  I really admire
her very much.  She is a little too grave and serious, perhaps, but
that is a fault on the right side.  There is too much fastness and
vulgarity in society nowadays.  A quiet woman is quite refreshing."

"Lauraine never used to be grave and serious," Sir Francis remarks
somewhat moodily.  "She was one of the merriest and most amusing
girls I ever met."

"Ah!" observes his companion sententiously.  "_That_ was before she
married you.  Somehow marriage does alter some women amazingly."




CHAPTER VI

"Lauraine is very much changed," laments Mrs. Douglas to a select
coterie of friends, on one of those chilly spring afternoons when
they have dropped in to sip souchong and talk scandal in her pretty
drawing-room.  It is her "day."  There are heaps of women scattered
about--there are a few men.  The lights are subdued.  There is a
pleasant fragrance of tea, and the scents of flowers fill the air,
and the babble of many voices sounds cheerfully amidst it all.

"Changed!" says one of the friends to whom she has addressed that
remark; "in what way?"

"So quiet and cold and--odd," Mrs. Douglas answers; "says she hates
society, detests going out, takes up artists and singers, and all
sorts of queer people.  I really expect to see her going about soon
in a terra-cotta gown, and wearing no corsets, and looking as great a
fool as Lady Etwynde.  So absurd, you know, for a young woman, and a
pretty woman.  Of course, Lady Etwynde is a duke's daughter, and can
do what she likes; besides, she's so lovely nothing could make her a
fright, though she only turns it to account by being the most
eccentric woman in London.  I don't blame her.  If you can't be
remarkable in one way, it's just as well to be it in another.  But
the people one meets there--it really is _too_ awful.  Just the sort
of creatures that _Punch_ takes off.  And Lauraine is always there;
so tiresome, because Lady Etwynde's day is the same as mine, and so
she can never come here."

"I thought it was odd never meeting her at your house," remarks one
of the coterie.

"Yes, that's how it is you never see her," resumes Mrs. Douglas,
somewhat hurriedly.  "She and Lady Etwynde are inseparable, though
I'm sure I can't imagine why."

"I met her--your daughter, I mean--at the Salomans' the other night,"
remarks a tall, fair woman, leaning languidly back in her chair.

"Yes, I know she was there," says Mrs. Douglas, colouring slightly.
"Charming woman, Lady Jean!"

"Very," answers her friend dryly.  "I--I suppose Lady Vavasour never
heard anything about--_that_."

"Oh, there was nothing--nothing; he assured me so himself.  I would
not have trusted my child's happiness to his care had he not done so.
The world is _so_ censorious, dear Mrs. Chetwynde."

Mrs. Chetwynde laughs.  "True; but all the same there is no smoke
without fire, you know--and Lady Jean was awfully wild about his
marriage."

Mrs. Douglas looked uncomfortable.  "I don't know anything about her.
But I am quite sure she is all right.  She is received everywhere."

"Of course," smiles her friend.  "And the very openness of their
friendship is guarantee sufficient for its perfect harmlessness; just
like Lauraine's with Keith Athelstone."

"Keith Athelstone!" exclaims Mrs. Douglas, turning very white.  "What
do you mean?"

"They are always together," says Mrs. Chetwynde maliciously.  "So
they were in Rome, for the matter of that.  But, of course, they are
very old friends--brought up as children, and all that?"

"Of course," says Mrs. Douglas loftily.  "Why, they were like brother
and sister.  Surely no one is so uncharitable as----"

"My dear, we are all uncharitable, more or less.  And Lauraine is
very pretty, and Sir Francis not _quite_ so devoted as he might be,
considering it was a love-match--so you said.  I think I should give
Lauraine a hint, if I were you."

"Lauraine is quite capable of managing her own affairs," said Mrs.
Douglas pettishly.  In her own mind she thinks she knows how such a
hint would be received.  "Keith is only a boy.  Lauraine looks upon
him just as a brother--always did.  She is accustomed to order him
about, and have him beside her.  Pray don't listen to such
ill-natured gossip."

But all the time an uncomfortable memory is rising up before her.
She sees a pale young face and the fiery wrath of two blue eyes, and
hears the passionate reproaches of Keith Athelstone's lips as he
tells her of his ruined life.  Good heavens! what does he mean?  Why
does he stay by Lauraine's side now?  She feels nervous and
unsettled, and almost resolves she will speak to Lauraine, and give
her that word of caution which her friend has suggested.  The world
is so wicked, and after all--

Her thoughts are interrupted by fresh arrivals.  Into the exclusive
circle in which Mrs. Douglas' soul delights, stride the massive
proportions and gorgeous sweeping draperies of Mrs. Bradshaw B.
Wooliffe.  Following her is a little dainty figure--a sort of modern
Dresden shepherdess in point of colouring and attire.  She is
introduced by Mrs. Wooliffe as "My niece from New York, Miss
Anastasia Jane Jefferson."

Every one looks at her.  Every one wonders whether it is prettiness,
or piquancy, or _chic_, that makes the radiant face so
bewitching--the tiny figure so attractive, and one among the coterie,
the Belgravian matron, with _demoiselles à marier_, looks virtuously
indignant and annoyed at the intrusion.

"She is sure to be fast and talk with that awful twang, that's one
comfort," she thinks, as with the coldest and stiffest of bows she
greets the new-comer.

But Miss Jefferson is not fast or vulgar, and though her accent and
expression are decidedly American, they have a piquant charm of their
own that the younger members of the conclave listen to enviously, and
the men seem to find irresistibly attractive.

Mrs. Bradshaw B. Wooliffe and her niece fairly break up the select
groups and _tête à têtes_, and make themselves the centre of
attraction and attention.  The loud voice and hearty laughter of the
elder lady peal through the room, to the utter annihilation of softer
voices and confidential whispers.

"We have just come from Lady Etwynde's reception," she says, laughing
immoderately.  "I reckon you people are having some fun out of your
new craze.  Guess _she's_ gone pretty nigh out of her mind, at all
events."

"What was it like?  Do tell us," chime in one or two voices--voices
of outsiders to whom the Lady--or, as she loved to call herself, the
"Ladye"--Etwynde Fitz-Herbert is a sort of unknown wonder.  Her
sayings and doings are chronicled by society journals; but her circle
of intimates and associates is very limited.  They begin to wonder
how Mrs. Bradshaw B. Woollffe gained admittance.  That lady now
informs them.

"Well," she commences, looking round at the attentive faces, "I was
calling at Lauraine's--beg pardon, I suppose I should say Lady
Vavasour's--and she took me with her and Keith.  Keith is a great
chum of the 'Ladye' Etwynde's.  We got to her house--a real lovely
place with a big garden, out Kensington way; all red brick, no
windows to speak of, but lots of _frames_, and a hall--my! the
queerest place--all done with matting, and so dark, and everywhere
double doors and plush curtains, 'of a sad sage-green,' to use
Keith's expression.  Such a silent place, not a sound anywhere.
Well, we went into a room, also very dim and a great deal of green
and yellow about it, and huge pots of sunflowers in the windows, and
the very queerest chairs, and on every chair sat a woman, and behind
every chair stood a man.  They were all quite still, and had their
eyes fixed on the sunflowers and their bodies twisted into the
queerest attitudes.  I stared some, I can tell you.  Lauraine went up
to a tall, beautiful woman dressed in a clinging gown of terra-cotta
stuff--such a gown!  My!  Worth never had anything to do with _that_
frock, I guess.  She came forward and spoke to me.  'You are not one
of us, but you are welcome,' she said.  Her voice was very sad and
very sweet.

"'This is one of our contemplative afternoons,' she said, when I had
bowed--speak, I really couldn't.  'We do but sit still, and _yearn_.'"

"What?" ejaculated the listeners.

"Guess you're through," laughs Mrs. Woollffe.  "Well, so was I."

"'Yes,' she went on.  'We yearn for all that is most soul-uplifting.
We each set a distinct object before our mind's eye, and absorb
ourselves in its contemplation.  These moments are truly precious for
those who can be brought to appreciate their intensity.  We are most
of us earnest students of our faith--disciples of
culture--worshippers of the beautiful--the far-reaching--the
subtle--the sublime!'

"'And don't you ever speak?' I asked her; for of all the vacant-eyed,
sleepy idiots in creation I never came across such a set as were
'yearning' there.

"'Speak--oh yes--in season and at proper times,' she says.  'But
thought is often more beautiful than words, and language is deficient
in much that might clothe and dignify our ideas.'

"Keith chimed in here.  'Yes,' he said; 'they _are_ apt to sound
ridiculous when it comes to clothing them in common-place speech.'"
The listeners exchange glances.

"And this was really how they went on--how idiotic!" murmurs Mrs.
Douglas.  "I knew Lady Etwynde was always very eccentric, but I think
she is quite going out of her mind now.  I hope she won't imbue
Lauraine with any of her absurd ideas.  How was she
dressed--Lauraine, I mean?"

"Oh! quite æsthetic!" exclaims Mrs. Woollffe.  "Indian silk, creamy
coloured, big puffs, and very clinging about the skirt, and an
'intense' hat.  I know it was intense, because Keith said so."

"What made Mr. Athelstone go to such a nonsensical affair?" demands
Mrs. Douglas, frowning.

"Didn't ask him.  S'pose he likes to 'yearn' a bit also.  Perhaps
it's refreshing to fix one's mind on an object and meditate upon it.
Can't say myself.  Don't think I ever tried it."

"And didn't they _do_ anything?" inquires Mrs. Chetwynde.

"They talked an almighty queer jargon, if that was doing anything.  A
lot about 'disciples' and 'searching after the unknown,' and the
'abstruseness of the beautiful,' which was the religion of culture.
Lauraine saw some snowdrops and violets and admired them, and then
some one burst out about the fierce beauty of the sunflower and the
grand teachings of the tiger-lily.  I confess I felt beat then, and
said so, but Lady Etwynde only smiled that sad, pale smile of hers,
and murmured: 'Ah, Nature has much to teach you.  Her great marvels
are yet a blank.  To comprehend her is a power given only to the
chosen few.'  I felt uncommon near saying that _she_ resembled Nature
there, for I am blessed if I comprehended her."

"And one hears such wonderful stories about this Lady Etwynde,"
murmurs a voice in the background.  "Really, it seems quite
disappointing."

"She is real pretty," remarks Miss Anastasia Jefferson.

"Pretty?  But then she dresses so oddly, and her hair----"

"A club behind and a nimbus in front," laughs the pretty American.
"Trying, but still seems to suit her.  Real cunning she looked when
she lay back in her chair with her eyes turned up--so."

She imitates her so exactly that there is a well-bred ripple of
laughter among the circle, but behind Miss Jefferson's back they will
all denounce the vulgarity and bad taste of ridiculing any one to
whose house she had just been.  Of course, they themselves never do
such things!  Mrs. Douglas draws a little nearer to Mrs. Bradshaw B.
Woollffe.  She wants to question her concerning Keith Athelstone.

"You might have brought your young friend here," she says affably.

"Guess he didn't want to come," answers Mrs. Woollffe bluntly.  "At
least he said so."

Mrs. Douglas colours faintly.  "He has so many engagements; money of
course makes a young man immensely popular," she says, with a cold
smile.

"'Tain't money that's got anything to do with Keith Athelstone's
popularity," answers Mrs. Woollffe sharply.  "He's just one of the
nicest young fellows I've ever known, and people don't take long to
find that out.  His manners are perfect.  He can dress like a
gentleman without looking a fop.  He's plenty to say and says it
well, and he's most uncommonly good-looking.  Ain't that enough to
make a young man run after?"

"Still," says Mrs. Douglas sweetly, "if he had no money, Society
would turn its back on him to-morrow."

"Society?" echoes Mrs. Bradshaw B. Woollffe.  "I guess you mean the
mothers in society.  I've my own opinion about the gals."

"Does he--does he seem to care about any woman in particular?" asks
Mrs. Douglas.  "I suppose he means to marry and settle down now."

"Guess he don't," says Mrs. Woollffe.  "Likes to be free, so he says,
and quite right too."

"Then there is no one--no girl--he pays attention to," persists Mrs.
Douglas determinedly.

Mrs. Bradshaw B. Woollffe looks at her with aroused curiosity, and a
faint smile comes to her lips.  "Oh, yes, there is _some one_ he pays
great attention to," she says, slowly and distinctly, "but no girl as
you say--she is a married woman."




CHAPTER VII

The season rolls on with Fashion tied to its wheels.  Society is on
its treadmill once more, hard at work and calling it pleasure.  To
young Lady Vavasour, courted and admired as she is, the life seems to
have grown ineffably wearisome.  All around her now is gorgeous,
restless, insatiable.  She plays her own part amidst it all, and
finds an endless monotony about it.  The glare, the fever, the
unrest, oppress her with a vague wonder and an inward contempt, for
those who live in it and for it alone, and misname the craving for
false excitement--pleasure.

She has seen very little of her husband this season.  He has his own
engagements and occupations--she hers.  Lauraine feels often very
lonely and very sad.  The total want of sympathy between Sir Francis
and herself becomes more and more apparent, and she knows very well
that among all her host of acquaintances there is not one whom she
can really count as a friend--except, perhaps, Mrs. Bradshaw B.
Woollffe.

Of late a strange fear has come to her--one she hardly dares breathe
to herself.  It is connected with Keith Athelstone.  She has been
trying to make herself believe that that youthful episode is quite
forgotten; that her marriage has put it out of his head; that his
plainly shown preference for her society is only the outcome of past
association.  He has said no word to undeceive her; but then perhaps
words are the least dangerous of the shafts of warfare in Love's
armoury.  A look, a sigh, a broken sentence--these often convey more
than any set form of speech, and between Keith and Lauraine is a
subtle comprehension that makes them utterly independent of words.  A
look across a crowded room, a smile at some witticism caught by their
ears when in the midst of some brilliant circle, a glance as some
words of a song, or tender strain of music, touch some memory in
their hearts, or awake a thrill of pain or pleasure--these are enough
to draw them together by the imperceptible links of a common
sympathy.  But in it all Lauraine suspects no danger.  It seems to
her that they are so utterly divided, it is impossible Keith can
forget that fact.  Perhaps he does forget it, but not in the way she
imagines.


The Lady Etwynde is holding a reception.  It is not purely æsthetic
this time, and "yearning" is not an item of the programme.  Literary
people, dramatic people, artistic people, musical people--a strange
and somewhat odd-looking throng--crowd the "sad green" rooms, which
are all thrown open _en suite_, and where the "fierce beauty" of the
sunflower may be seen in all its glory this warm summer night.

Dissimilar as they seem, yet Lauraine and Lady Etwynde are very good
friends.  Lauraine has discovered how much good sense, cleverness and
cordial feeling live beneath that mask of eccentricity which the fair
æsthete shows to the outer world, and she finds her entertainments
far more amusing than many of the others she attends.

To-night Lauraine comes alone, Sir Francis having declined to be
present at what he terms "such d----d humbug."  It is nearly midnight
when she arrives, and the rooms are crowded.  She sees the Lady
Etwynde attired in a fearful and wonderful gown, with skirts more
clinging, and puffs more voluminous, and hair more "tousled" than
ever, and in her hand is a fan of peacock's feathers, which she from
time to time waves slowly and gracefully to and fro.

Even all her enemies and detractors cannot deny that the Lady Etwynde
is essentially beautiful and graceful.  Her every movement and
attitude are a study; her soft, clinging draperies float and sway to
her rhythmic motions in a way that is at once the envy and despair of
her imitators and admirers.  To see her walk across a room is a
treat--a poem, as her disciples say, and countless have been the
effusions inspired by her doing so.

As Lauraine greets her, Keith Athelstone approaches.  She had not
expected to find him there, and a little flush of pleasure rises to
her face.

The Lady Etwynde looks at them with grave, soft eyes, and a little
puzzled wonder on her face.  She has heard some of the buzzing from
Society's wings, and she is beginning also to notice that Keith is
the very shadow of the beautiful "Lady Lauraine."

"I have a great treat in store for you," she says, in her slow, soft
voice; "Signor Alfieri has promised to sing for me to-night.  You
know him, do you not?"

"I have heard him at the opera, of course," says Lauraine.  "But
never in a room.  How charming."

"He is the most perfect Faust I have ever seen on the stage,"
continues the Lady Etwynde.  "To hear him sing the 'Salve Dinora' is
quite too exquisitely divine.  Yes; he is going to honour my poor
little entertainment."

"You are very fortunate," remarks Keith Athelstone.  "I know he
refused to sing at the Duchess of St. Alban's 'At Home' the other
night, despite all entreaties."

"We must not miss a note," says the hostess tranquilly.  "I think I
will ask him to sing now.  I have been waiting for Lauraine."

Keith offers his arm, but the "Ladye" declines it, and makes a sign
to an æsthetic poet, who looks starved enough to be "yearning" after
the substantial goods of life.  Then she floats off in her swaying,
sensuous fashion, and Keith and Lauraine follow in silence.  Seldom
has Lauraine looked so lovely as she does tonight.  Her dress is of
the palest primrose shade, and of that exquisitely soft texture of
silk called _satin merveilleux_, which drapes itself in graceful,
clinging folds.  A bodice and train of this shows a mass of creamy
lace beneath.  Some Gloire de Dijon roses nestle at her bosom, and a
few more carelessly intermingled with maidenhair fern, and knotted
together by long trails of primrose-coloured ribbon, are held in her
hand.  Her hair is without ornament, and the beautiful throat and
neck are unmarred by any jewels, and gleam white as marble.

Keith Athelstone's heart gives one great painful throb as he moves on
by her side.  He thinks he has never seen her look so exquisite, so
dangerously attractive, as to-night.  "Sir Francis not coming?" he
says carelessly, and from his voice no one would suspect the feelings
at work within his breast.

"No," says Lauraine.  "He doesn't like æstheticism, you know."

"They are not in such strong force to-night," says Keith, glancing
round to see to whom Lauraine has just bowed.  "Still, a good many
planted about, I think.  It's the men get over me.  Did you ever see
such guys?"

"Can't Lady Etwynde convert you?" asks Lauraine, smiling a little.

"To make myself up in that fashion--no, thank you.  Besides, Nature
hasn't given me the class of features necessary, and I don't suppose
even a prolonged course of starvation would reduce me to such
skinniness in the matter of legs and arms as those 'yearners' can
boast of."

"No; it would take a good time to make you thin, I imagine," Lauraine
answers, with an involuntary glance at the splendid proportions of
her old playmate.  "So much the better.  All men should be tall and
well-made.  Nature should establish it as a rule."

"And all women beautiful, of course?"

"Beauty is not the only attraction a woman need possess," Lauraine
says thoughtfully.  "I remember hearing some one remark once that the
most beautiful women might win the greatest amount of admiration, but
not the greatest love."

"There is a class of beauty that can command both.  Of course, there
are women who are eaten up with the vanity and satisfaction of their
own charms.  To my thinking, no amount of personal loveliness could
compensate for bad temper, ignorance, or self-conceit."

"I think so too," Lauraine answers, meeting a sudden glance of the
blue eyes, and colouring faintly beneath the warm admiration they
speak.  "But, as a rule, men go mad after a beautiful face, and don't
trouble themselves about anything else beneath it."

"I should never do that," Keith remarks quietly.  "I like a woman for
what is in her--not for the straight features, and fair complexion,
and good eyes."

"You are hard to please," Lauraine remarks, glancing down at her
flowers.

He makes her no answer whatever.

There is a sudden hush now in the crowded rooms--a silence of
expectation.  Keith finds a seat for Lauraine on a low ottoman near
one of the windows, and stands there beside her.  The moon is shining
clear and brilliant in the sky above, and streams over the quaint
flower-beds and trees in the garden.  The sweet sultry summer night
is full of beauty and fragrance--it acts like a spell on the warm,
imaginative temperament and ardent fancy of the young man.

Across the silence a chord of music breaks.  With his eyes still
fixed on the garden and the sky, Keith Athelstone waits and listens.

The voice of the great singer thrills across the rooms in that most
exquisite of strains which Faust utters to his love.  Lauraine's
heart grows chill for a moment, then leaps up and beats with a sudden
vivid emotion that fills her veins like fire, and holds her
spell-bound to the end.  In that moment it seems to her as if some
revelation had come of all she has missed in life.  The passionate
music finds its way to her very soul, and holds in suspense life,
thought, memory.

There is a lull--a pause, and then a torrent of acclamation fills the
air.  The charm is snapped.

The hands that hold the roses tremble visibly.  She sits there and is
silent, and does not look up at the face above her for answering
sympathy, because of this strange dread and ecstasy he may read upon
her own.

He _has_ read it, despite the downcast eyes.  He has read it, and his
own heart grows rapturous with a sudden delight, and cold with as
sudden a dread.

Fresh applause--fresh entreaties.  A moment's silence, and then the
great singer seats himself at the piano, and pours out again in the
matchless melody of his voice these words:

  The old, old pain of earth
    On land or sea,
  And all that makes life worth
    For you or me.
  What is it, darling, say,
    While stars shine on above.
  What makes us glad or gay?
    'Tis love--'tis love!

  The world's old weariness,
    What can it be,
  And all life's sad mistakes
    That sad lives see.
  What makes them, darling, say,
    While here we hold our bliss:
  What makes us glad to day?
    A word--a kiss.

  The strange winds sigh above
    The bending trees,
  And strange and sad days, love,
    May follow these.
  What care we, darling, now,
    Since love is ours,
  For winter blasts that rob
    The summer flowers?

  So that our hearts be one,
    So that our love be true,
  The world may laugh or frown
    For me and you.
  Men may be wise or fools,
    Stars may die out above;
  We ask of life no gift,
    But love--but love![1]

[1] These words are copyright.


He has set the words to music of his own.  Music sad and gay and
triumphant all in one.  Music that finds its way from ear to heart,
and fairly carries away the listeners.  As he ceases--as the
rapturous exclamations of the crowd sound stormily after the long
silence--Lauraine looks up and meets Keith Athelstone's eyes.

Only a look!

But looks have broken the fetters of a lifetime's silence before now,
and in that moment the secret of two hearts is revealed as clearly
and distinctly as if a trumpet-blast had shouted it to their ears.

Their eyes droop.  Neither speaks.  A moment or two pass on.  Then
comes a hoarse whisper to Lauraine's ear.

"Come away from this crowd; it is stifling, and that man has spoilt
all other singing for to-night."

Without a word she rises and takes his arm.  She feels like one in a
dream.  Senses, feelings--all are lulled to a strange mysterious
repose, and now and then her heart thrills with a dreamy rapturous
ecstasy.

The memory of that perfect melody is about her still, and follows her
out into the shadows of the night, and the dim walks of the quaint
old garden.  She feels disturbed, perplexed, but almost happy.  She
has not noticed where he is taking her; only the breath of the cool
night air is on her brow, and her eyes, dark and passionate as his
own, gaze up at the tranquil lustre of the stars.  Under the trees
they stand, and face one another at last.  He sees only a slender
white figure, with the moon shedding its silver rays around it, and
two quivering lips that part as if to speak.  With a sudden
ungovernable impulse he draws her to his breast, and on the trembling
mouth spends the pent-up passion of his heart in one long kiss.




CHAPTER VIII

For a moment--one mad moment--Lauraine forgets all else save that she
loves.  Then she snatches herself away from those fierce-clasping
arms and starts back, covering her crimson cheeks with her hands,
while at her feet the cluster of roses falls, and lies unheeded.

"Oh, Keith!" she sobs, terrified and dismayed.

He recoils as if a blow had struck him.  His eyes--_bad_ blue eyes,
indeed, now--burn with eager light.  A thousand mad, wild words rush
to his lips, but he does not speak them.  He is striving for an
instant's self-command.  "Forgive me," he says.  "I--I forgot.  You
used to let me kiss you in the old days, you know."

"The old days," she says, and her hands drop, and white and sad she
stands before him, looking back at his face with agonized eyes.  "I
thought you had forgotten them long ago!"

"Since your wedding-day, you mean?" he says bitterly.  "No,
Lauraine--I do not forget easily, and you are not the sort of woman a
man can forget.  Heaven knows, I tried hard enough.  I did everything
in my power to drive you out of my head those twelve months after
your marriage.  A black year that is to look back upon, Lauraine; and
you gave it to me."

"Oh, hush!" she says entreatingly; "you have no right to speak like
this now, and I have no right to listen."

"No right," he says, and all the rich, full music of his voice has
grown hoarse and harsh with strong emotion.  "I _have_ a right--every
right.  The right of loving you with the truest, fondest love man
ever gave to woman.  I never meant to meet you again--I never sought
you; but Fate threw you in my way in Rome, and after all those weary
months I--I could not help being glad of it.  You--of course it was
nothing to you: it never will be--you are so cold; you never cared
for me as I for you, and now--oh, God--if you only knew _how_ I love
you!"

Lauraine shivers from head to foot.  It is not his words, his
reproaches, that fill her with so strange a dread--it is herself.
She knows that she loves him as intensely and as uselessly as he
loves her, and that before their two lives now stretches a broad
black gulf they cannot cross or evade.

She is quite speechless.  The awful ordeal of that wedding-day comes
back before her eyes, fresh and vivid as if it had been but
yesterday.  She knows she has committed a fatal error, but it is too
late now to rectify it.  Presently Keith speaks again.

"I think you have spoilt my whole life," he says.  "Thought drives me
mad, or to distractions that are ruinous to body and soul.  I feel as
if I cannot bear to live as I do.  Why," he continues passionately,
"do you know, I never stand alone on a moonlight night, or look at
any beauty in nature or in art, or see the stars shining in the sky,
but I long and long till longing drives me desperate for just your
presence beside me, your voice on my ear.  I never hear a strain of
music that touches my soul but I long to turn to you for answering
sympathy.  I am young and rich, and have life and the world before
me, and yet there is no single thing I can enjoy with any real
heart-whole enjoyment now.  There is always the one want that drives
me desperate--the one craving for _you_!"

Lauraine listens to the torrent of his words, and all her soul seems
rent and shaken.  In the old days, the old boy and girl days
together, she had never loved Keith Athelstone as she loves him now,
and that thought terrifies her with a sense of her own wickedness and
an awful dread of the ordeal before her.

"I am sorry--so sorry," she says tremulously.  "I did hope you had
got over it--had forgotten--

"Forgotten!" interrupts Keith bitterly.  "No; I leave that for women."

"Do you think I forgot?" she cries, flashing round upon him with
sudden, tempestuous anger.  "I did not.  My marriage was in a way
forced upon me by my mother.  You knew it, then.  Why do you say such
things to me now?  Am I not wretched enough?"

Her voice breaks into a faint sob, and all his heart melts at a sign
of grief from her.

"Are you wretched?" he says softly.  "Oh, my poor darling, not half
so wretched as I.  When you gave yourself away from me you little
knew what you did.  I think I have never known one happy moment
since--nor ever shall again."

"Why do you tell me this?  Is it any use?" falters Lauraine.

"I don't know," he says wearily.  "I thought, perhaps, you might pity
me--be a little sorry for your work."

"Oh, don't talk like that," she entreats, lifting two soft tear-wet
eyes to the young, haggard, reproachful face before her.  "Pity
you--do you think I am a stone; that I have no feeling?"

"Then you _are_ sorry--a little sorry," he says, coming nearer.
"Well, that is some consolation.  But I can't live on that.  I want
something more.  I don't care how badly you think of me, Lauraine.
After to-night I suppose I have just done for myself, but I _will_
hear you say what your eyes told me a little while ago--say you love
me."

His arms are wrapped around the slender, trembling figure--he holds
her closely to his breast and looks down, down, into her eyes with
all the fire and passion of his impulsive nature burning in his own.
As she meets that look the blood flies like flame through her veins.
She feels escape is impossible.

"Don't ask me," she whispers faintly.

His look never changes.  "Answer me," he says.

Her eyes sink before that gaze, and all the lustre of the summer
night seems to sway and reel amidst the leafy shadows.

"Yes--I love you," she says, with sudden desperation.  "It is no new
thing to tell you--Heaven forgive me for saying it!  Is my shame
complete--is there any other confession you wish to force from me?"

His arms release her as suddenly as they had clasped her.  "No," he
says.  "Do not speak so bitterly.  I am a brute, I know; but I was
always a bad fellow, according to your mother.  After all, it is a
poor satisfaction to know we are both in the same boat.  It makes my
pain no less to know you share it.  Well, I suppose I have about done
for myself now.  I may go galloping to the downward road as fast as I
like.  I have insulted you, and I have made an utter fool of myself.
I'd give a great deal not to have done it, but it's too late to say
that now.  Will you ever forgive me, Lorry?"

The old pet-name of their childish days slips out unconsciously.  It
moves Lauraine almost to tears.  How sad, how changed, how
unutterably dreary is life now!  "I have little to forgive," she says
unsteadily.  "I share your fault.  Only--only----"

"Hush!" he says, with sudden fierceness.  "I know what you are going
to say.  My folly has shut me out from the only happiness I have.
How cruel a _good_ woman can be."

"It is not cruelty--it is safety," murmurs Lauraine, with faltering
voice.  "How can we meet and face each other in the world knowing
what we know?  Friendship between us is impossible--you have made it
so--and there can be--nothing more."

"I would rather _die_ than lose you," says Keith passionately.  "If
you were happy it would be different; but you are not, and your
husband is a blackguard, and half London knows it--even your precious
mother.  It was bad enough to stand aside and see you sold to him, as
you were; but it was nothing to what it is now--now, when I know you
are not even happy.  Oh, Lauraine, God knows I would have made you
_that_, if it lay in any mortal's power!"

The hot colour comes into the beautiful, pale face on which his eyes
are fixed.  She holds out her hands entreatingly.

"Say no more--it can do no good.  Whatever his faults are, I am his
wife.  Nothing can alter that!"

"Something can," is trembling on Keith's lips, but he does not utter
it.  Lauraine is not a woman to be trifled with, and he dares not
breathe a word that would insult her dignity.  All that is boiling in
his heart he dares not even think.  He knows the purity of her soul
and life, and from that pedestal he cannot drag her down to listen to
the baser temptings that he might have whispered to another woman.

For a moment they stand silently there.  At last Keith speaks.  "I
never meant to say such words to you again.  I don't know what drove
me mad to-night.  The music, and that song, and your look combined.
Oh! Lauraine, you can't love as I do, or you would not scruple to
take happiness while it lay in your power.  Life is so short, except
for those who are miserable, and in all our lives we shall only drag
on a wretched half-and-half existence.  I know you are the one woman
in the world for me, and I have lost you."

"You may forget--in--time," falters Lauraine, her lips growing white
at the pain of that thought, her whole soul wrung with the
unutterable anguish of this coming parting.  "You are very young,
Keith, and have the world before you."

"The world is not you," he answers, looking down from his tall height
on the pale, sad face he loves so madly.  "It is all nothingness and
emptiness to me now.  But you won't be too cruel to me, Lorry--you
won't visit the sins of this evening too hardly on my head.  Don't
tell me we are never to meet or see each other.  I can't live without
a sight of you sometimes, and if you will only say you forgive me I
promise not to offend in the same way again.  I have kept silence all
these months--I can do it again, and----"

"Oh, Keith, don't tempt me like this," she entreats sorrowfully.
"You know--you must know--that if we love each other we cannot be
'only' friends.  It is not safe for either of us."

"I shall not run away from you as if I were afraid," he says
doggedly.  "I do not care to live a day if I don't see you.  Can't
you trust me? can't you believe my word?  To-night shall be buried
and forgotten, unless--well, unless some happier fate awaits us in
the future.  We can be as we were, surely.  There is no harm in that?"

_No harm in that?_

Lauraine echoes the words in her heart.  No harm--and with the memory
of this scene in both their hearts, the thought of that passionate
embrace, thrilling every pulse, the rapture of one mad moment ever at
hand to repeat its tempting.  No harm in it!

A spasm of pain crosses her face.

"Your own sense, your own feelings, ought to tell you that such a
course is full of harm," she says faintly.  "But, of course, I have
no power to banish you.  You accuse me of blighting your life, and I
deserve the reproach.  I should have been firmer--truer; but I did
not think your love was so faithful, and in one weak moment I yielded
to my mother's persuasions.  The harm is done past all undoing,
and--and now you wish to increase my unhappiness."

"I wish to be nearer to you--to see you sometimes; that is all.  Is
it a great deal to ask, considering what I have suffered at your
hands?"

Lauraine knows it is only paltering with temptation--only leaping up
fresh misery for herself and him in time to come, but still she
hesitates; she is only a woman, and she loves.

Alas! that instant's hesitation undoes all the better resolves she
has been striving to make.  A window is thrown open--voices
sound--there comes an echo of footsteps--they are alone no longer.

Keith bends over her impulsively.  "Say one word, Lauraine--only one.
Say 'stay!'"

She draws her breath sharp and quick--his hand is on her own--she
feels its strong, warm pressure, and all her good resolutions fly
away.  Nothing seems in her heart but one aching, passionate longing
for his presence--his voice.  Her face pales to the whiteness of
death, but to his ear steals the word he has asked for--a whisper
that seals their fate to-night--a whisper for which the future holds
its own Nemesis of dread and of despair.

"Stay!" she says, and they pass out of the silver radiance of the
night as they entered it--together.




CHAPTER IX

Keith Athelstone goes home that night to his rooms, and feels in his
heart that he has been a coward.

He knows he has had no right to wring from a woman's weakness such a
concession as that which he has won from Lauraine.  She is not of the
stuff that heroines are made of, and truly there is no "heroic"
element about himself.  It is a great mistake to fancy people are
either very good or very bad in this world of ours.  Only too often
there is simply a mixture of both in their characters, and
circumstances or strength of feeling alternately throw their weight
into the balance.

But alone to-night with his own thoughts, and with the fever-pulse of
passion dying slowly back into its natural beat, Keith remembers what
has passed, and has the grace to feel a little ashamed of it, even
though he declares to himself over and over again that he would act
in just the same way under similar circumstances.

It is always hard for a second person to judge of our actions.  No
one can understand those secret springs--that inner mechanism which
moves us to do certain things by certain impulses.  That one mad
moment had been to Keith Athelstone as the turning-point of his life.
A fiery temptation had to be withstood, or yielded to.  He had chosen
to do the latter.

With his hot-blooded, impetuous temperament--with the knowledge in
his heart that he loved this woman beyond and above all others in the
world, beyond all possibility of forgetfulness--he knew also that
such a thing as mere cold, prosaic friendship was an utter
impossibility.  At some moment like to-night, when senses and heart
thrilled with answering rapture, when passion ran riot in his veins,
when the aching and longing of his life spoke one impetuous desire
and hurled aside all scruples, as the strength of Samson rent asunder
the withes that bound his mighty limbs--at some such moment as this,
forms and ceremonies, right and wrong, all would be again forgotten,
and those words of Lauraine's would be verified when she said "there
can be no safety in such a compact."

He paces to and fro his rooms--the rooms Lauraine's judgment and
choice has selected and furnished--luxurious apartments that look out
on St. James's Park.

The radiance of the early summer dawn--beautiful even in a great
city--is over all the sky.  A faint breeze rustles the trees--the
birds sing and chirp among boughs that are moist with the night's
rain, just some tender freshening shower that had fallen scarce an
hour before.

Those young tired eyes of Keith Athelstone's look out on it all, and
a sigh parts his lips.

"There are so many women in the world," he mutters, as he ceases his
restless pacing, and leans against the open window.  "So many that
are beautiful and young, and easy to win, and yet all my life is but
a longing for one who can be nothing to me.  How hard fate is!"

The cool, fresh air blows over his brow, but it does not still its
aching.  His whole soul is hardened, and bitterly ashamed.  He has
gained his will, he has forced Lauraine to say "_Stay_," but all the
same his triumph brings no satisfaction.  That she loves him he
knows, but she is not a woman to lend herself to the base frailties
of a lax morality, to sink to the low level that pursues its joys in
secret, and smiles serenely on the face of society at large.  There
would be no playing at innocence with her, and she was too proud as
well as too passionate not to suffer intensely in the struggle.  And
then, after all, how would it end--how do these poor pretences ever
end?  The barrier is so frail--a look, a word, a chance meeting, and
it is overthrown, and then----

He springs impetuously to his feet here.  He dares not pursue that
train of thought any further.

"I won't think of the end," he mutters.  "I shall see her still, and
sufficient unto the day is the--evil--thereof!"

The evil?

Might it come to that for Lauraine, and for himself!


"My dear," says Lady Etwynde to Lauraine, as she sits in the boudoir
of the latter, "your roses looked charming; there was something so
simple and artistic in that arrangement; not like a regular florist's
bouquet.  But why did you leave them in the garden?  I found them
lying on the grass when I walked there this morning, and as I love
roses, though they have not the subtle meaning of our own peculiar
flowers, I brought them in and put them in water."

Lauraine flushes hotly, and then grows as suddenly pale.

"I--I dropped them, I suppose," she says, bending over some crewels
she is sorting.  "It is of no consequence.  I get so many flowers."

Lady Etwynde glances quickly at the beautiful, troubled face.  She
has taken a warm liking to Lauraine, and when alone with her drops
all her fantastic ways and conversation.  She leans back now in her
low chair, and looks long and thoughtfully at her friend.

"I had not much time to speak to you last night," she says presently;
"and you left so suddenly.  I was afraid you were ill."

"Oh no--I was only tired," answers Lauraine.  "How charming your
evening was.  I rarely hear such music as at your house."

"Yes; Signor Alfieri was delightful," agrees Lady Etwynde.  "Did you
like his new song, by the way?"

"Do you mean the English one?" asks Lauraine, feeling an odd little
thrill at her heart as she remembers the passionate melody which had
so moved and stirred her.  "It was perfectly exquisite."

"I wrote him the words," says Lady Etwynde calmly.

"_You!_" exclaims Lauraine, in surprise.

"Not that I believe in such sentiments," continues her friend,
smiling.  "For the matter of that, I suppose no poet is quite idiot
enough to believe what he writes, unless they are things like the
'Boudoir Ballads.'  But it sounds well to talk of love being all in
all, though no one believes it is--or, indeed, wants it to be.
Moonlight and kisses are all very well, but we want some more
substantial food in life than that."

"You don't believe in love, then?" questions Lauraine.

"Not much.  I have outlived that faith.  Most women do.  At sixteen,
you know, we believe in all men; at twenty in _one_; at thirty in
none.  I believe in none.  I have given myself up to the pleasures of
the mind, and they suit me much better.  I am a disciple of culture."

"I know," smiles Lauraine.  "But you might find a kindred spirit even
there.  What then?"

"Well, I have not much fear of that," says Lady Etwynde gravely.
"You see, the men I meet and associate with are more or less
hobby-riders.  They each have a special subject, and devote
themselves to it--almost too much so, in fact.  But I suppose it is
difficult to draw the line.  A fair and adequate amount of culture is
delightful, but it leads people on to wild lengths sometimes.  I am
wondering in my own mind how far the desire for its acquisition will
lead me.  Still, one must have some object in life--especially if one
is a woman and not married; and I shall never be that."

"Why is it so improbable?" asks Lauraine.

"Why?  Oh, because I don't care for such a prosaic termination to my
liberty for one thing, and I don't believe in men for another.  And
society--society as it is now--has really very little interest for
me.  It bores me, in point of fact.  All the same, my dear, the men I
meet and whose society I cultivate are not at all the sort of men to
inspire romantic sentiments--do you think so?"

"Candidly, I do not," smiles Lauraine.

"And as a woman--however hard she strives to cultivate her mental
power--must also have some outlet for the weaker and more sentimental
portion of her nature, I take refuge in writing poetry.  It is very
safe, and does no one either good or harm, which is more than we can
say of some of our modern poets.  I have never shaped my actions by
what people think or believe, and I am not going to begin now.  I am
called eccentric, but I would rather be that than commonplace.  You,
now, are very different.  You are full to the brim with romance, and
you still believe in 'moonlight and kisses.' Unfortunately, I can't
preach a mission to you, for you are married; and as for art and
culture, well, your position demands incessant sacrifices, and the
higher good must suffer.  Perhaps, after all, it is best to live for
the life about one, not some abstract thing that only has interest
for a few.  The one owns a wider range of sympathy, and has at least
the advantage of being understood."

"I think no amount of learning or mental culture--to use your
favourite expression--should destroy one's sympathy with the common
joys, and needs, and sorrows around us," says Lauraine thoughtfully.
"Life has to be lived; we can't get over that fact, and to shut
ourselves apart in the selfish absorption of one special idea, and
sneer at all who cannot understand or cannot pause to investigate it,
is really a sort of sin against ourselves and our fellow-beings."

"Do you mean that I do that?" asks Lady Etwynde.

"Oh, no; you have plenty of sympathy even for those outside the pale
of 'culture.'  But a great many of those who surround and flatter you
at your æsthetic court are the most prejudiced and narrow-minded
individuals it has ever been my lot to meet."

"Ah," sighs Lady Etwynde.  "I suppose you are right--it is a case of
'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.'  I often wonder whether it
is best to take life very seriously, or laugh at it as a good joke."

"I should think our own natures could alone make either case
possible," says Lauraine.

"But the greatest mistake is to put your heart into it," continues
Lady Etwynde.  "It is like giving a licence to your friends and
enemies alike.  The purely selfish people are the only class who get
any real enjoyment out of life, after all."

"It can scarcely be enjoyment," says Lauraine.  "A life apart from
love--from sympathy--from the interests of others--can never be an
entirely happy one, though it may be in a sense untroubled."

"We are having a very grave conversation for a morning call," says
Lady Etwynde; "and it all came about the flowers.  Was that your own
idea, my love?"

"No--Keith--Mr. Athelstone suggested it," Lauraine answers, with
again that burning blush on her delicate cheek.

"You and he are very good friends, I suppose," remarks Lady Etwynde,
rising to make her adieux.  "But all the same, my dear, I should
suggest to him to get married.  A rich young man knocking about town
is sure to get into mischief.  Yes, he'd be much better off married,
and there's that pretty American girl--whatever her name is; you know
her, don't you?--well, absolutely dying for love of him."

"Indeed?" says Lauraine coldly; "I should scarcely think she was the
sort of girl he would admire."

"I never said he admired her.  Only I suppose there was something or
other between them in New York.  At least they met there, and her
aunt is so awfully thick with him."

"He has never mentioned her name to me," answers Lauraine, wondering
why that sudden, sharp pain is at her heart--why the bare idea of
Keith Athelstone's marriage should be so hateful.

"Ah!--well, I suppose there is nothing in it but talk," says Lady
Etwynde.  "You and he are just like brother and sister.  He would be
sure to have told you."

Brother and sister!  A hot, shamed flush creeps to Lauraine's brow,
and spreads itself over her face and down to the milk-white throat.
Brother and sister!--and on her lips still burns, and in her heart
still lives the memory of that kiss of last night.

Lady Etwynde goes, and Lauraine sits there alone, and thinks with
shame and terror of what she has weakly yielded--permission for his
visits, his presence, his old accustomed privileges that the world
deems so natural--that she knows to be so wrong now.  At the bottom
of her heart lies a bitter contempt of herself and her folly--it
stings her to hot anger with him--to a haunting dread that will ever
pursue her.  And yet ... and yet ...




CHAPTER X

"My dear Lauraine," says Mrs. Douglas, on one of those rare occasions
when she is at Lauraine's house, "isn't it rather bad form to have
Keith dangling after you so much?  Of course every one knows you are
just like brother and sister, and Sir Francis is so kind to him and
all that--still, people will talk, you know, and really nowadays a
woman can't be too careful.  Society is terribly scandalous."

Mrs. Douglas has made one of a dinner party at the Vavasours', and is
at present sitting by her daughter's side in the great flower-scented
drawing-room.

Lauraine quietly waves the great white fan of feathers in her hand to
and fro, and looks coldly down at her mother's face.

"Who has been good enough to discuss my affairs with you?" she asks,
scornfully.

"Pray don't be offended," says Mrs. Douglas, timidly.  "People will
talk, you know, and really Keith's adoration is very obvious.  He
never even seems to see there is another woman in the room when you
are by.  It really is not fair to you.  Why doesn't he marry that
Yankee girl who is always running after him?  It would be the best
thing he could do."

"I will ask him if you wish," says Lauraine; "or perhaps it might be
better if you put the question yourself."

Mrs. Douglas feels decidedly uncomfortable.  "I am only speaking for
your good," she says.  "For your child's sake you ought to be
careful.  Of course, Society is very lax, and women can do things
nowadays that in my youth would have been thought disreputable.
Still, you make yourself quite too remarkable about Keith.  It is far
better to have twenty men dangling after you than one."

A hot flush burns on Lauraine's cheeks.  "I decline to discuss my
affairs with any one," she says, coldly.  "I am perfectly well able
to take care of myself."

"Ah, people always think that," says Mrs. Douglas, fanning herself
leisurely.  "Of course you are your own mistress now, and can do as
you please.  I simply give you a hint.  People will talk, you know."

Lauraine's heart beat quickly, stormily, beneath its shrouding laces.
A new trouble seems dawning for her, and yet it but rouses in her
heart a fierce desire to brave the world--to laugh to scorn its
whispers.  Is she not strong?  Has she not honour--courage--fidelity?

"I will not affect to misunderstand you," she says at last, looking
calmly into her mother's face as she speaks.  "You think Keith might
forget--or I?  But you might know us better than that.  We are not
likely to scandalize Society--be at rest on that point.  Is it not
possible for a woman and a man to care for each other without love,
and without--shame?"

"Possible?--that _may_ be," said Mrs. Douglas.  "But probable--I
think not.  I don't believe in Platonics when a man is under sixty
and a woman not forty-five.  Nor does the world.  Take my advice,
dear--there is safety in numbers--don't think only of the attractions
of one."

"I am not the sort of woman to make many friends," Lauraine answers,
tranquilly.  "And the few I really like are more to me than the whole
crowd of others.  But your warning was quite unnecessary, mother, and
I think you had very little right to utter it."

She rises from her seat as she speaks and goes towards the other end
of the room, where the Lady Jean sits radiant and entertaining, being
one of the few wise women who take as much pains to conciliate their
own sex, as to charm the other.

Mrs. Douglas looks after her uneasily.  "I have done no good," she
thinks.  "Perhaps only harm.  But, after all, she is warned, and
really it is quite too ridiculous to think he can hang about her for
ever.  I thought he would have had more sense.  And she has been
married two years--he ought to have forgotten by this time.  As for
Lauraine herself, she was always so romantic, I don't blame her so
much; but Keith--and what on earth can she see in him except that he
has long eyelashes?  I always thought him quite stupid myself, and
Lauraine has mind enough of her own to like cleverness in other
people.  But I do hope she won't get talked about.  It would be
altogether too dreadful.  There is Lady Jean, now----"

Her reflections are cut short here--a robe of amber silk seems to
float past like a pale gold cloud, and disperse itself over the low
chair and Ambusson carpet by her side.  Emerging pale and languid
from amidst the cloudy draperies is the face of the Lady Etwynde.
Mrs. Douglas greets her eagerly.  It is rarely indeed that
conventional gatherings like the present are graced by the presence
of the lovely æsthete.

"Yes; I make an exception in favour of Lady Vavasour," she says, in
her soft, plaintive voice, that seems to rebel against the very
burden of speech.  "But Society is not congenial to me.  My tastes
and inclinations move in a very different groove.  Why _will_ people
be frivolous?  Life is not meant for eating and drinking and
scandalmongering.  What can it really matter who is dressed by Worth,
or Pingat, or Elise; or whose husband ran off with an actress, or
whose wife got talked about at Hurlingham, or anything else of the
same sort?  Yet this is all one hears discussed in Society.  Ah, when
a perfect culture has given us a perfect understanding of the
beautiful, we shall also have a truer morality.  The soul will soar
far above the senses, and we shall look back in wonder at the
ignorance we once enjoyed."

"No doubt," murmurs Mrs. Douglas, vaguely.  She is quite unable to
comprehend what Lady Etwynde means, but it would never do to let her
perceive it.

"We shall be translated--advanced, as it were," continues Lady
Etwynde, dreamily.  "We shan't tie back our gowns, and impede the
action of our limbs.  We shan't cramp our bodies into the machinery
of bones and wires, that gives us that most odious of modern
inventions--a 'waist.'  We shall languish no longer for happiness and
occupation.  Our minds will soar into purer ether.  Ah! happy days
that I see in the dim future, and yearn for in the mists of present
darkness."

"Exactly," again asserts Mrs. Douglas, in increasing bewilderment.
"But don't you think 'waists' are very much admired?"  She possesses
a very elegant figure of her own, and has her corsets made by a
special French artist.  It therefore brings no thrill of blissful
expectation to her that advanced civilization preludes such an
abolition as "stays."

"Admired!" murmurs the Lady Etwynde, dreamily.  "By the
Philistines--yes; by the thoughtful--the advanced--the intense--oh,
no!"

"The Philistines!" says Mrs. Douglas, in growing bewilderment.  "I--I
thought corsets were not introduced till the time of Queen Elizabeth."

The Lady Etwynde smiles sadly.  "You do not understand--it is merely
a technical term for those outside the pale.  Progress and culture
mean enlightenment--we all need to be enlightened.  Our individual
tendencies are hampered by social restrictions.  But the soul will
find its wings and soar above such paltry barriers.  Women will take
their place in the ranks of the advanced, and the mockers at progress
will have to recognize its truth, and feel that it is a law powerful
enough to sway the whole machinery of civilization, and lift it
upwards to a grander and loftier life."

"Good Heavens! what a dreadful woman," thinks Mrs. Douglas.  "I--I
have not thought much of such things," she says aloud.  "I am not a
clever woman, like yourself, dear Lady Etwynde.  But I really think
we are very happy as we are.  What good can progress do?"

"Ah!" sighs Lady Etwynde.  "The old cry of the world--the battle-cry
of the human race, that is ever so obstinately opposed to its own
good.  When we cease to oppose, and investigate instead--when
prejudice and obstinacy give way to thoughtfulness and consideration,
then some proper basis will have been obtained on which to establish
the glories of Progress, and the sublimity of Culture."

Mrs. Douglas feels too hopelessly bewildered after this speech to
pursue the subject.  She gives a sigh, and resigns herself to
incomprehensibility; but the entrance of the gentlemen makes a slight
disturbance, and the Lady Etwynde lapses into thought.  Unknown to
each other, both of them are watching the same man--the tall,
well-knit figure of Keith Athelstone.  He stands a little apart from
the group; his face is very grave and very pale.  There are dark
shadows like a bruise under his eyes, and the drooped lids hide their
expression.  Perhaps it is as well.  They are eyes more given to
reveal than to conceal.  The other men draw nearer to the dazzling
groups of silk and satin and lace.  Some one goes to the piano, and
begins to play.  Through the open window a faint breeze steals, and,
weighted with perfume, floats through the soft-lighted rooms.

"He only looks at _her_," sighs Lady Etwynde.

"Why doesn't the silly boy go and talk to some of those women?" Mrs.
Douglas says to herself angrily.  "Does he really care for her still?
How absurd!  And how ill he looks--as if he hadn't slept for weeks;
but perhaps that's dissipation.  He's sure to have his full share of
it now."

Meanwhile Keith stands there absorbed and grave.  He has not spoken
to Lauraine all the evening.  He is wondering whether he might seek
her now--whether her duties as hostess will permit her to give five
minutes to him.  But even as he thinks it, he lifts his eyes, and
meets a signal from the gracefully waving fan of the Lady Etwynde.
He has no choice but to cross the room and take the seat by her side.

"We have been discussing Progress," she says, with that exquisite
smile of hers lighting her face like moonlight as she looks at him.
"I was saying women spoil themselves by their dress nowadays.  It is
too elaborate--too overdone.  Lauraine is one of the few women who
can dress perfectly.  But then she has taste and artistic feeling."

"It is not every one who could dare to copy the Lady Etwynde," Keith
says, with an admiring glance at the amber clouds that seem to float
round the graceful figure of his companion.  "And to one who dresses
as she does, all other women must look only 'clothed.'"

"A distinction with a difference," says Lady Etwynde.  "You pay
compliments very gracefully.  That is a rare thing nowadays."

"You are very good to flatter me," answers Keith.  "What I said was
scarcely a compliment.  How handsome Lady Jean Salomans looks
to-night!"

"Yes," answers his companion, giving a rapid glance from under her
languid lids in the direction indicated.

Lady Jean is sitting on an ottoman, with a maze of hothouse blossoms
as a background for her brilliant beauty, and wears a dress of
corn-coloured satin, with scarlet poppies gleaming here and there.
Sir Francis is standing beside her, and looking down with
unmistakable admiration at the animated face and brilliant eyes.

Involuntarily Keith's glance turns from her to Lauraine.  What a
contrast!

"Like a sunflower and a lily," murmurs the Lady Etwynde, following
that glance and comprehending it.

"Yes," he says, quietly.  "They are very unlike.  One would scarcely
expect the same man to admire both."

"Sir Francis has been more than two years married," says Lady
Etwynde, musingly.  "Time enough, I suppose, to admire other people
besides his own wife.  Why will women marry?  It is such a mistake!"

"Why will they marry the wrong man, is more to the point," Keith
mutters under his thick moustache.  "Heavens, what ill-assorted
matches one does see!"

"True," replies "the Ladye."  "Scarcely made in heaven, I suppose you
think?"

"In a very different place, it is my candid opinion."

Mrs. Douglas has risen ere this and moved away.  She is never
comfortable in Keith Athelstone's presence, and is only too thankful
when she can evade him.

"Yes," says Lady Etwynde.  "It is sad, but true, that much of the
unhappiness of life is caused voluntarily--the proofs of our own
unwisdom.  Of course, results are always unforeseen.  We only grope
in the dark.  But, for my part, I have never heard of people acting
for what they term 'the best' without dire misfortunes following."

Keith's eyes seem to travel down the long rooms to where one
shimmering white robe trails in fleecy folds.

His heart aches bitterly as he thinks of what "acting for the best"
has brought upon two lives that might have been so happy now.

"_Oh, the little more, and how much it is, and the little less--and
what worlds away!_"

He talks on with Lady Etwynde in desultory fashion.  He knows he need
not exert himself to be entertaining here.  She likes a good
listener--one who can be interested in her ideas and follow them, and
with Keith Athelstone, as with Lauraine, she lays her art jargon
aside.  Yet in his heart he longs for one sound of Lauraine's
voice--for just five minutes by her side.

They have not met since the scene in Lady Etwynde's garden, and
to-night her greeting has been of the coldest description.  But he
dares not go over to her now, as he would have done a few days ago.
He sits there, contenting himself with an occasional glance, and
listening patiently, if a little wearily, to the beautiful æsthete's
discussion.  Then Lauraine looks across at him and smiles.  His heart
seems to warm beneath that sign of remembrance--his whole face
changes.  Lady Etwynde notices it, and grows troubled.

"He is in love, and he does not conceal it--poor boy," she thinks,
compassionately.  "Ah, I always thought those fraternal arrangements
were a great imposition.  One or other is sure to ask or desire that
'little more' which just makes all the difference.  Ah! it is worlds
enough away from these two.  Does she know, I wonder?  I think not.
She could not act that serenity and indifference.  She is too
transparent.  Oh, I hope she does not suspect.  It would be terrible
indeed.  She is so young and beautiful, but she is not happy.  Any
one can see that; and her husband is always running after that brazen
woman over there.  Dear me, how sad life is.  Full of
contradictions--of pain.  Mr. Athelstone," she adds aloud, "I want to
speak to that gentleman over there.  He is a _savant_ of the most
advanced school.  Kindly give me your arm."

Keith rises and obeys, and comes now within the radiance of the
floating white draperies that have been before his eyes the whole
night long.




CHAPTER XI

Lauraine is talking to an elderly man--a colonel in the Guards.  She
neither looks up, nor moves, but she is perfectly, painfully
conscious that Keith is standing by her side.  She knows that he has
crossed the room, and left Lady Etwynde with her _savant_, and all
the time she has not lifted an eyelid, or stirred from that listening
attitude.  Keith stands there patiently.  He has the happy knack of
looking always graceful, and to-night he looks handsomer than ever,
despite the pallor of his face, the dark shadows under his eyes.  The
Colonel talks on, and Lauraine answers animatedly.

Keith wonders if any memory is at work within her heart--if her light
words and smiles are real or acted.

There is a little stir at the other end of the room.  Some one is
going to recite--a French count, who is a friend of Sir Francis'.
The elderly colonel is a little deaf.  He murmurs an apology, and
moves down the long suite of rooms.  Keith comes quietly forward, and
drops into the vacant chair.  For the first time Lauraine looks at
him.  With one rapid, comprehensive glance, she takes in the change
in his face--the dark shadows under those heavy lashes, the weariness
upon the brow, the stern sadness of the mouth.  Pity, sympathy,
grief--all well up in her heart and speak in her glance, but her lips
are schooled to rigid silence.  She dares not seem to notice these
signs of suffering.

"If he would only leave me--if he would only be wise!" she thinks,
with a sudden passionate dread.  "I could bear that, but to go on
like this is madness."

He speaks at last.  "London grows unbearably hot.  I suppose you will
soon be leaving?" he says.

"Yes," answers Lauraine, unconcernedly.  "Sir Francis talks of going
yachting."

"And you accompany him?"

"I?  Oh, no--I hate the sea.  I shall go to Falcon's Chase.  I long
for a little quiet and rest.  I never cared much for fashionable
life, you know."

"Does Sir Francis make up a large party?"

"I believe so.  The Salomans, I know, are going; and Marc Vandeleur,
his great friend; and the Chesters, and one or two boating men."

"The Salomans?" questions Keith, a note of surprise in his voice.
"Oh, they go, do they?"

"Why not?" asks Lauraine, looking at him in wonder.  "They are very
fond of the sea--at least, Lady Jean is."

"So I suppose," he says in the same peculiar way, marvelling if
Lauraine is really the only woman in London Society who does
not--know?

But Lauraine asks the question in perfect good faith.  She does not
like Lady Jean, but she knows no harm of her.  She detests scandal so
utterly that she never listens to boudoir gossip and five o'clock tea
talk, if she can possibly help it.  To her Lady Jean is simply a
fascinating woman of the world--very handsome, very brilliant, very
much admired; a little _risquée_, perhaps, but on good terms with the
most exclusive of great "sets," and received everywhere.  That her
husband should admire her, and show his preference openly, in no way
disturbs her.  To be jealous one must love passionately, and Lauraine
has never loved her husband at all.

"Why do you speak like that?" she asks him suddenly.  "Don't you like
Lady Jean?"

"Like her?  I have scarcely the honour to know her at all," answers
Keith.  "But if you wish to know the truth, I am unfortunate enough
to have formed a prejudice against her.  She gives me the idea of
being false.  I should not like you to make a friend of her."

"A friend!" exclaims Lauraine, quickly.  "I should never think of
doing that.  I am not the sort of woman who can't exist without a
confidant--some one to 'gush' to and consult, and be constantly with.
But Lady Jean is very charming, and has been very kind to me, and Sir
Francis wished me to show her every attention."

A little hard smile comes to Keith Athelstone's lips.  "You are very
obedient," he says.

Lauraine colours, and is silent.  Meanwhile, at the further end of
the room, with her yellow skirts and blood-red poppies gleaming in
the lamplight, Lady Jean and Sir Francis Vavasour are talking
confidentially together.

"Why must he come?" asks Sir Francis, drawing his dark brows together
in a heavy frown.  "You could manage it if you wished."

"Manage it?" re-echoes Lady Jean.  "_Cher ami_, what can't a woman
manage when she wishes?  But I don't wish to manage it.  I don't care
to be talked about as we should be.  Of course Jo would do anything I
wished, but I know what's best, and mean to stick to my first
resolution."

Mr. Salomans rejoices in the name of "Joel," but his wife has long
ago decreed that it shall not be used by her lips, and "Jo" he always
is and always will be.

"You will spoil all the pleasure of the trip for me," murmurs Sir
Francis.

"Chut!" she says, contemptuously; "don't be foolish.  You can grow
sentimental on the waters of the Mediterranean while you think of
your absent wife."

"My wife," mutters Sir Francis, following the rapid gesture of the
fan.  "Oh, there's that young fool again.  I wonder he isn't tired of
her; she's insufferably stupid."

"Most good women are," agrees Lady Jean; "but they have one
incomparable advantage--they are so safe.  You can always get
amusement, you know, from other men's wives--it is a consolation to
think the 'other' men can't get it from yours."

Sir Francis feels a little twinge.  He knows perfectly well what she
wishes to convey, but he has an obstinate conviction that Keith's
attentions to his wife are nothing to her, that whatever _tendresse_
there is, lies on the side of the young man.  Lauraine is cold and
calm and uninteresting--he has made up his mind to those facts.  Lady
Jean has not yet been able to stimulate his tired passion for his
wife into emitting one spark of jealous fire.  He has tired of her,
but he has great trust in her.  He never fears that a breath of
scandal will hover about her, and to all Lady Jean's hints he turns a
deaf ear--as yet.

"I often wonder what made you marry," says Lady Jean, under cover of
the music that has followed the recitation; "and she seems so unlike
the sort of woman who would tempt you into such a folly."

"You are right; it was a folly," mutters Sir Francis, moodily.  "But
I was mad about her at the time, and, after all, one must marry some
time or other; it is a necessity when you have property and all that."

"Mad about her!" sneers Lady Jean.  "How like a man!  You could stop
at nothing, of course, but the absolute possession of your fancied
toy.  And your craze has lasted two years!  Admirable fidelity!"

"It would never have been a craze at all," whispers Sir Francis low
in her ear, "if you----"

"Hush!" she says, softly; "I have forbidden you to speak of that.  It
would have been different if we had met--earlier.  As it is----"

She ends the sentence with a sigh.  It may mean anything, and is
poetic; it sounds better than to say, "As you are quite as rich as
Joel Salomans, and are of better birth and family, I would have taken
you instead."  Sir Francis hears only the sigh, and meets a glance
from the dark, brilliant eyes.

"As it is you are cruel," he whispers, passionately.

"Cruel to be kind," she says, with a little mocking laugh.  "Keep to
your pearl of purity, _mon cher_.  If you are not a jealous husband,
you might surely be a faithful one."

"Have I not told you she bores me?" says Sir Francis, petulantly.
"And I know she detests me, and always did.  I did not mind
that--once.  Now--well, one can't be always at a one-sided adoration."

"Fancy 'adoring' any one!  How odd!" laughs Lady Jean.  "I thought it
was only in novels men did that."

"Have you never loved then?"

Lady Jean raised her arched eyebrows, and looks at him with admirable
amusement.  "I?--most decidedly not.  Should I be without wrinkles at
my age, if I had?  _Non, merci_.  I never believed in such folly, and
never perpetrated it."

"Perhaps only because the right teacher was not at hand to give you
the lesson," says Sir Francis, audaciously.

"The right teacher," says Lady Jean, with a little mocking laugh.
"There is no such teacher for me, my dear Sir Francis.  I can defy
fate."

"I wish you would tell me how," says Sir Francis.  "The recipe might
be useful."

"You have had your attack of fever, so you are safe," she answers,
laughingly.  "No, my recipe is too valuable to be parted with.  Now,
you have talked to me long enough to-night.  Go away and entertain
some one else."

"I don't want to talk to any one else," says Sir Francis, doggedly.
"Why do you send me away?  You are not afraid of Mrs. Grundy, surely?"

"Oh no.  She and I are the best of friends.  Afraid?--well, I don't
think I have any need to be afraid.  Every one is talked about
nowadays--either for what they do or what they don't do.  And it is
so much easier to say a thing than disprove it.  It is just like a
lovely complexion--every one can say you paint, but every one can't
see you wash your face.  Society never believes in the lovely
complexion, and yet wouldn't enter a dressing-room if it could, for
fear of finding there was nothing but--soap and water--after all!"

"But all this is no reason why I am to go away now," complains Sir
Francis, sulkily.

"Can't you trace the analogy?  I don't want to make your pretty wife
jealous.  I don't want people to talk.  I--I don't want to give you a
monopoly of my company.  These are reasons enough, surely."

"Your reasons are admirable--all except the first.  Lauraine jealous!
You might as well expect the Venus of Milo to come down from its
pedestal, and walk through a modern drawing-room."

"Marriage does not seem an attractive _menu_ after all, does it?"
says Lady Jean, musingly.  "Two years, and you have done with the
olives and sweetmeats, and come to the plain ungarnished _rôti_.  The
_rôti_ is much more wholesome, though."

"I believe every man who marries comes to the conclusion he has made
a d----d mistake."

"And every woman, too," agrees Lady Jean, quickly.  "Well, it's not
to be wondered at.  Difference of feeling makes a wide gulf between
two natures; and where do you find two people likely to get on
together for a lifetime?  Bah--it is impossible!  Now go--go--I have
talked to you quite enough, and the music is over.  I am going to
chat with Lady Etwynde.  She amuses me, and it is rarely any one does
that nowadays."

Sir Francis takes himself off obediently, and the evening goes on as
such evenings usually do.  There is music and singing and
conversation, and the people who get next the people they like, are
content enough, and those who are wrongly paired are indescribably
bored, and the beautiful hostess moves like a slender white lily
among them all, and two blue eyes watch her with an intenser
"yearning" than ever the Lady Etwynde or her friends have experienced
for the subtle--the infinite--the sublime.

Lauraine is growing very weary of this life she leads.  There seems
no possible escape from it, and fashion, in its way, is just as
fatiguing as the work-room, or the factory, or the office.  There are
times now when she longs to be away from the roar of noisy streets,
to breathe cool fresh air, to be alone with the peace and loveliness
of nature, to have just--_rest_.

There is no such thing to be found here.  Every day, almost every
hour, has its occupations.  The jargon, the laughter, the scandals
and frivolities of Society are alike distasteful; but she cannot
evade them, be she ever so weary.  She stands in the ranks, and must
needs move onward in the hot and hurried march.

She is counting the days now before it will all be over--before she
can fly to quiet Falcon's Chase, and in her child and her books find
companionship more to her taste.  She longs for those dark old forest
lands, where the noise of the sea echoes always, and everything is
grand and noble, and rich with the traditions of past ages.  She does
not dread solitude, but rather longs for it.  All this feverish
unrest will be over then.  She need have no house party till the
autumn, but she is going to take Lady Etwynde with her.  There is
something harmonious and tranquil about her that will suit the dim
old Chase, with its great dusky chambers, and magnificent hall, and
oak-panelled galleries.  Moving to and fro among her guests, and
talking the pretty frothy nothings that Society demands, Lauraine
thinks only of this.  The longing is taking absolute possession of
her, and Keith will not be able to follow her--there.

She feels a dread--almost a dislike to him to-night.  The memory of
that scene a few days ago fills her with a sense of intolerable
shame, and her mother's warning sounds like an added insult.

A sense of irritation--of impatience--of disappointment is heavy at
her heart.

"He is not good, or honourable, or he would not stay," she says to
herself, as move where she may, the sadness of those eyes, with their
watchful entreaty, haunts her.  "Why did I let him persuade me to
utter that word?"

The guests leave--the great rooms are solitary.  Sir Francis goes off
to finish the evening somewhere else.  Lauraine seats herself wearily
by one of the open windows, and looks out at the foliage of the
Park--all dry, and sere, and dusty now, with the long drought and
heat of summer.  She looks and looks, and great tears gather in her
eyes and roll slowly down her cheeks.  She has everything that the
world counts worth having--she is young and beautiful and courted and
flattered; but for all that her heart aches--aches--aches.

"It was impossible then--it is doubly impossible now," she says,
wearily.  "Sin--shame--misery--whichever way I look at it.  Oh, God
help me--what am I to do?"




CHAPTER XII

Falcon's Chase is apt to be considered somewhat dreary and dull by
those members of the fashionable world who only exist to kill time,
and see no beauty in Nature's handiwork.

But to Lauraine the whole place is beautiful beyond words.  The great
dark forest lands that shelter the deer in their coverts, the old
bridle-paths, where the boughs meet overhead, the solemn, stately old
mansion itself, shut in by elm-woods and mighty oaks of centenarian
growth, the stillness and solitude and repose that breathe
everywhere, these have for her an exceeding charm, an ever-varying
delight.  For days and days she does nothing but wander about,
sometimes alone, sometimes with Lady Etwynde.

The weather is mild and the sky is grey and soft.  The keen, salt air
of the sea braces and refreshes her tired frame, and languid spirits.
Her friend is enchanted with the place, and throws æstheticism to the
winds and goes about in a neat tailor-made gown of homespun, and
abolishes the nimbus around her fair head, and evinces an energy and
alertness that would astonish her admirers of the
"lilies-and-languor" class.

One closing evening they stand on the summit of the great cliffs, at
whose base a wild sea is breaking tempestuously.  A wilder sky is
above their heads, one that foretells a storm close at hand.

Lauraine turns her face seaward, and the fierce wind and dashing
spray seem to give it a new and wonderful beauty.  "It is glorious!"
she murmurs, as she stands there in a sort of rapture.  "It seems as
if one could move, breathe, be free in a place like this."

"Free?" says Lady Etwynde.  "Is any one that?  As long as life
shackles our souls, so long does bondage curb our wishes.  I never
met a single person, man or woman, who could do exactly as they
wished."

"Well, you have not much to complain of," laughs Lauraine.  "You live
as you like, do what you like, go where you like, and have no
domestic responsibilities."

"True," says her friend, with sudden gravity, "yet for all that I
have felt a pang of envy sometimes when I have seen a poor
beggar-woman in the streets press her child to her breast, and look
with real love at its poor, pale, wizened face."

"What a confession for a disciple of Culture--one who has educated
her eyes and taste to such perfection that a _criante_ bit of
furniture, a false tone of colour, a mistaken arrangement of
draperies, will torture her as a discordant note tortures the ear of
a musician!  So you haven't outlived feminine weakness yet, my dear?"

"I suppose Nature always exacts her rights from us at some period or
another," answers Lady Etwynde.  "I have become accustomed to hear I
am passionless and cold, and find it less trouble to live up to the
character than to deny it.  People are always so sure they know us
better than we know ourselves.  Being a single woman, it is rather a
comfort to have such a reputation, and as I dislike men, and
patronize fools, I am safe."

"But you are not cold-hearted at all," says Lauraine, turning her
face, with its beautiful sea-kissed bloom, to that lovely languid one
of her æsthetic friend.  "Don't you really care to marry?"

"What should I gain?" asks Lady Etwynde, tranquilly.  "_Le mieux est
l'ennemi du bien_, you know.  I am very well off.  I can do pretty
much--not exactly--as I please.  I have no one to control me, or
consult.  I can follow my own whims and vagaries.  Am I not well
enough?"

"And yet you envied the beggar-woman?"

"That was in one of those moments when Nature was whispering at my
heart.  Nothing touches me like a child's sorrow or love.  I have
often longed to adopt one, but--well, I suppose the _feeling_ would
not be there?"

"You might marry for--love," suggests Lauraine.

"My dear," murmurs her friend, with delicate scorn and faint
reproach, "at thirty years of age?"

"That is not old for a beautiful woman," says Lauraine, with
unconscious but most sincere flattery.  "And it is our natures that
make us old, I think, more than actual years."

Lady Etwynde smiles her pensive, moonlit smile.

"I shall never love," she says, calmly.  "Men are so uninteresting;
and, besides, people always seem so unhappy when they are married."

Lauraine colours hotly, and her eyes turn seaward.

"Yes," she says in a low voice.  "The people we know and meet--in
Society.  But to them marriage has been chiefly a matter of
arrangement, or convenience.  There is not often any _heart_ in it."

"And if there were it would not last," answers Lady Etwynde.
"Sentiment is lovely in theory; you cannot reduce it to practice,
though."

"I think it might be possible," says Lauraine, dreamily.  "Even
fashion and the world cannot kill feeling.  If people would only be
more true to themselves--less artificial, less exaggerated--they
would be much happier."

"Doubtless; but far less comfortable!  My dear Lauraine, Society
suits its age, and always has suited it.  It is no use wishing things
could be altered."

"I suppose not," sighs Lauraine.

"You are rather romantic," continues Lady Etwynde, as they turn back
from the great bold headland and move towards the narrow path that
leads into the woods of Falcon's Chase.  "It is an unfortunate
quality for either man or woman.  They will never see persons or
things as they really are.  They will love, and invest the person
loved with every attribute they would _wish_ them to possess, and
which, alas! they never do.  They throw a halo of imagination round
every head that is dear to them.  Their existence is a series of
shocks and disappointments.  They see their fairy weapons broken time
after time in the world's rough warfare.  They stand and look at life
with wistful, feverish eyes, praying, 'Be as I fancy you,' and it
never will.  They break their hearts over the sufferings and sorrows
they see, and intensify their own by too keen a sympathy.  They are
never understood, especially by those they love the best.  They are
like the poets who sing to deaf ears and go through life
misunderstood, even if not scorned, and not ridiculed."

"What makes you think I am romantic?"

"A thousand things.  Your love of nature and solitude, your artistic
fancies, your emotional capacity, your extreme sensitiveness.  I have
a weakness for studying character.  When I first saw you I said to
myself: 'She is not happy.'  'She is full of idealities.'  'She cares
nothing for the world.'  'She will not be content only to--live.'  Am
I right, or not?"

"Can one ever know oneself quite?" murmurs Lauraine, colouring
softly.  "Do you really think I am not--happy?"

"Think!  It scarcely needs consideration.  But I am not going to
encourage you in morbid sentiment.  I do not think you are a weak
woman.  I hope not.  But I fancy you will need all your strength at
some time in your life."

"You talk like a sibyl.  Do you possess the gift of second sight in
addition to your other accomplishments?" laughs Lauraine.

"I don't think so.  It only needs a little thought, a mental trick of
putting two and two together, to read most characters.  Of course
there is a great deal of mediocrity to be met with, and yet it is
surprising how widely even mediocrities differ when you give yourself
the trouble of analysing them.  Human nature is like a musical
instrument--there are but few notes, seven in all--but look at what
volumes of melody have been written on those notes."

"And, to pursue your metaphor, what a difference in the sound of the
keys to each individual touch: some give back but a dull thud; others
a rich, full, resonant sound, full of life and melody."

"True, and therein lies the danger for many natures.  The master-hand
that produces the highest order of melody is perhaps too often that
of some passing stranger who goes carelessly by--and who, so to
speak, finds the instrument open--runs his hands lightly over the
keys, awakens brilliance, life, beauty, where others have produced
but dull, prosaic sounds, and then goes away and--forgets."

"Ah, if we were only wood and leather, and had wire for our strings,
not hearts and souls, we should not miss the player, or sigh for the
vanished music," says Lauraine.  "Unfortunately, forgetfulness is not
always possible for us, desire it as we may."

"Have you ever desired it?" asks Lady Etwynde, quickly.  "Pardon me,"
she adds, as she notices the sudden whiteness of the beautiful face.
"I should not have asked.  But you will not misjudge me, idle
curiosity had nothing to do with the question."

"I know that," says Lauraine, quickly.  "Yes, if there is one thing I
desire on earth it is the possibility of forgetfulness."

"The one thing that never comes for trying--or seeking--or praying,"
murmurs Lady Etwynde, dreamily.  Alas, those melodies!  A sad day
indeed it is for the woman who confesses--

  'The face of all the world is changed, I think,
  Since first I heard the foot-steps of thy soul.'

It is a beautiful idea, is it not?  That is one advantage of
poetry--it clothes a thought in grace so exquisite that we feel as if
conversing with a being from another world.  I never can understand
people saying they don't like, or can't comprehend it.  Sense,
memory, love, pleasure, joy, pain, all that is sensitive, emotional,
purest, best, is acted upon and intensified by poetry.  A word, a
line, will thrill us to the very core and centre of our beings--will
make joy more sweet---pain less bitter--love more exquisite and life
less hard, even beneath its burden of regrets."

"You love poetry so much?" questions Lauraine.

"More than anything.  But by poetry I don't mean merely beautiful
verses.  I include all grand and noble thoughts that imagination has
coloured, and that are read as prose.  A really poetic nature is one
that sees beauty in the simplest of created things as well as in the
grandest; that is humble and yet great; that drinks at every fountain
of nature; that steeps itself in the enchantment of a scene, not
measuring merely the height of a mountain from the sea level, or
dwelling on the possible discomfort of a storm at a particular
altitude; that knows its mind to be full of longings and yet can only
partially satisfy them; that would fain be glorified, filled,
enriched; and, alas! knows only too well that the wings of the mind
are beating against the prison-bars of a stern and hard existence,
from which escape is only possible in dreams, or--death!"

"Do you not think that such a nature must be intensely unhappy?"

"I said so at the beginning of our conversation.  But still it holds
the two extremes that make up life--happiness and misery; it gets
more out of each than natures more placid and commonplace and
content.  It really lives, and the others--stagnate."

"You must have read a great deal, and thought a great deal," says
Lauraine, looking admiringly up at her friend's thoughtful face.  "Do
you know I think you are the only woman I have ever met who talks
about other things besides dress and fashion?  I don't think I ever
heard you say a scandalous word of anybody.  You put me in mind of
something a friend of mine once said, 'Women who are intellectual
always talk of _things_; women who are shallow, of _persons_.'  There
is a great deal in that if you come to think of it.  How wearisome it
is to hear of nothing but 'names' in a conversation; and yet I know
heaps of men and women who are considered brilliant and witty and
amusing, and whose whole conversation turns upon nothing else but
gossip respecting other men, or women."

"I quite understand you.  Society is eminently artificial, and
objects to strong emotions, and would rather not be called upon to
feel anything.  'Why _will_ people go on writing?' said a lady to me
one day.  'Everything has been said that can be said.  Literature is
only repetition.'"

"'My dear madam,' I told her, 'light is always light;' but I suppose
you will acknowledge there is a difference between having our streets
illuminated with oil-lamps hung on a rope, or brilliant with gas and
electricity.  Art and science and literature must progress with their
age.  Scott and Fielding and Smollett don't suit the nineteenth
century, any more than perhaps Braddon, Ouida, and Rhoda Broughton
may suit the twentieth.  Nevertheless, each has had its day and held
its champions, irrespective of what a coming generation will say on
the subject.  The immediate good, excitement, benefit, is all Society
thinks of now.  It has laid its demands on each respective
cycle--birth, or heroism, or refined manners, or even mind.  But in
our age it worships the golden calf alone.  _You_ don't know, and I
don't; but all our reward is to be wondered at, and never to 'get on'
with people.  It is Lady Jean Salomans who 'gets on.'  But then she
knows her age and accepts it, and goes with it.  I dare say, being a
clever woman, she laughs in her sleeve at one set, and yawns after a
prolonged dose of the other; but she's the most popular woman in
London, and there's something in that more satisfactory nowadays than
in saying: 'I am the Queen of England.'  You and I will never be
'popular' in her sense, Lauraine, because we don't take the trouble,
or perhaps appreciate, the reward.  As for you, my dear, you are too
transparent for Society.  You show if you are bored or pleased, or
happy or sad.  That doesn't do.  You should always go about masked,
or you are sure to offend some one or other.  You are young, and have
been very much admired, and have a splendid position.  Socially you
might take the lead of Lady Jean, but you never will.  You don't care
enough about the 'honour and glory' of social success."

"No; it seems to me unutterably wearisome."

"Exactly, and you show that you feel it to be so.  I have done the
same for long, but then I covered my dereliction with the cloak of
eccentricity.  You simply do nothing but look like a martyr."

"Why will people live and act as if this life was the be-all and
end-all of existence, I wonder?" murmurs Lauraine.  "Fancy fretting
one's soul away in the petty worries of social distinction, the
wretched little triumphs of Fashion.  To me it seems such an awfully
humiliating waste of time."

"You laugh at my enthusiasm for Culture," answers Lady Etwynde; "but
that really is the only way to reform the abuses that disfigure an
age so advanced and refined as ours.  Invention and science have
never done so much for any period as for this, and yet men and women
shut themselves out from intellectual pleasures, and demand scarce
anything but frivolity, excitement, and amusement--not even well-bred
amusements either.  The gold of the millionaire gilds his vulgarity,
and lifts him to the level of princes.  Good birth and refinement,
and purity and simplicity, are treated as old-fashioned prejudices.
We are all pushing and scrambling in a noisy bewildering race.  We
don't want to think or to reason, or to be told of our follies in the
present, or of retribution in the future.  Gilt and gloss is all we
ask for, no harsh names for sins, no unpleasant questioning about our
actions.  Ah me! it is very sad, but it is also very true.  Society
is a body whose members are all at variance as to the good, and
agreed as to the evil.  The passions, the absurdities, the interests,
the relations of life are either selfishly gratified, or equally
selfishly ignored.  It is not of the greatest good to the greatest
number that a man or woman thinks now; but just the greatest amount
of possible gratification to their respective selves.  With much that
should make this age the most highly-cultured the world has known,
there is, alas! much more that renders it hopelessly and vulgarly
abased."

"And there is no remedy?"

"My dear, there are many.  But Society hugs its disease, and cries
out at the physic.  It knows of the cancer, but will not hear of the
operator's knife.  Perhaps, after all, it is right.  Think of the
trouble of being highly bred, highly educated, pure in thought and
tone, sparkling and not vulgar, amusing and yet refined, dignified
yet never offending, proud yet never contemptuous.  Why, it would be
a complete revolution.  Fancy forsaking artifice, living in a real
Palace of Truth, where everything was honest, definite,
straightforward!  Think of our poor pretty painted butterflies,
forsaking their rose gardens and beaten by the storms and cold winds
of stern prejudices and honestly-upheld faiths.  Ah, no!  It is
simply preaching a crusade against infidels, who are all the more
vindictive in opposition because civilization, instinct, and reason
tell them they are in the wrong...  Why, here we are almost at the
lodge, and here comes baby to meet us.  Ah, Lauraine, thank God after
all, that we are women.  Would a child's smile and broken prattle be
a volume of such exquisite poetry to any other living creature?"

Two little eager feet are toddling to meet Lauraine, two tiny arms
clasp her neck as she runs forward and snatches up the little figure.

A thrill of sweet, pure joy flies through her heart.  "Heaven has not
left me comfortless," she thinks.




CHAPTER XIII

  "I have loved," she said,
  "Man is weak--God is dread."


The child can just run alone now, and lisp his mother's name in that
sweet baby language which is earth's exquisite music to a mother's
ears.  He is a lovely little fellow, with big starry eyes, and soft
gold hair and winning coaxing ways, which did as they would with all
womankind, who had anything to do with him.

Lauraine kneels there for a moment under the great oak trees, and,
holds him clasped to her heart.

"We will take him home, nurse," she says, looking up at the stately
personage who is his guardian, and who adores him with all her soul.

"You can't carry him, my lady, and it is too far for him to walk,"
she says.

"Oh yes.  Lady Etwynde and I will carry him between us," answers
Lauraine.  "Darling--how strong and big he gets!  There, take
mother's hand.  Isn't he delighted, Lady Etwynde, to come with us?"

"He seems so," smiles her friend.  "Farewell to philosophy now,
Lauraine.  King Baby puts everything else into the background."

"It is wonderful, is it not?" says Lauraine, with something of the
old bright smile.  "I wonder how I could ever have lived without him.
He seems to hold all my heart in these two wee hands of his."

"I have often wondered," says Lady Etwynde, dreamily, "it seems an
odd thing to say, perhaps, but I have often wondered at women who are
mothers 'going wrong' as people express it.  I could understand a
wife, bad as it is; but to forsake your children your own flesh and
blood for the sake of a man's love--well it must be a sort of
delirious frenzy, I suppose.  And do you know it is not always
flighty women--careless women--who astonish us by a _daux pas_.  It
is sometimes the quietest and most unlikely."

"Yes," answers Lauraine very quietly; "these cases are so totally
different to the lookers-on.  They only see the result, not what
leads up to it."

"It is difficult to know what to think," says Lady Etwynde.  "I have
known people marry for love, for money, for rank, for convenience,
for obedience's sake, for duty's sake, and yet I don't know of one
single _really_ happy marriage.  The lovers have got sick of each
other in a year, the moneyed pair are miserable, the other
indifferent, unfaithful, erratic, as the case may be.  Is it any
wonder, Lauraine, that I gave the business a wide berth?"

"You are fortunate to be able to please yourself," says Lauraine; "it
is not every woman who can do that."

"No, I suppose not," says her friend.  "And then it's a case of 'what
can't be cured, must be endured.'  Is baby too heavy for you?  Let me
carry him now!"

"I wonder what makes him shiver so?" says Lauraine, anxiously.  "I
don't think nurse ought to have brought him out such a cold
afternoon."

"And we haven't a shawl or wrap of any description," says Lady
Etwynde.  "Yes he does look cold.  There, I'll turn his face away
from the wind.  We shall soon be home.  Why, how troubled you look,
my dear.  When you have a nursery full of little plagues, you won't
fidget about one so much."

But, despite her cheery words, she hurries on as fast as her feet can
carry her.  The little fellow shivers constantly during that passage
through the avenue, and glad indeed is she when the ruddy blaze of
lights and fire gleams from the great dark old mansion.

"He will soon be warm now," she says, cheerfully when they reach the
house.  Lauraine and herself take off his hat and coat, and sit down
with him before the great blazing fire in the hall, and chafe his
little cold hands and feet until he crows and laughs, and seems to
have quite recovered himself again.

The two women sit there and have tea brought to them, and administer
some to baby, who appreciates it immensely.  They play games with
him, and sing nursery rhymes, and in fact, have an hour of the
simplest, and perhaps also the purest enjoyment that women can have.
Then nurse comes, and he is carried off to bed, flushed, rosy,
boisterous, his pretty laughter echoing down the wide oak staircase,
his eyes beaming star-like down on his mother's face so long as ever
she remains in sight.  When he is fairly gone the two friends
ensconce themselves comfortably before the great fireplace.

A footman enters with the post-bag, and hands it to his mistress.
Lauraine unlocks it, and takes out its contents.  She hands two or
three letters to Lady Etwynde, and glances carelessly at her own.
One, she sees, is from her husband, the other--a sudden wave of
colour crimsons her face.  Only too well she knows those bold, clear
characters.  "Why does he write to me?" she thinks, passionately.
"Can't he even try and let me forget?"

Lady Etwynde is absorbed in her own correspondence.  Lauraine hastily
tears open the envelope and takes out two sheets closely covered.
The letter begins without any preamble, or formal mode of address:


"Perhaps I ought not to write to you.  You gave me no permission to
do so before you left town; but, all the same, I feel I must.  It is
only a week since you went away.  How long a week can be!  I can't
make up my mind where to go.  I have heaps of invitations, but don't
care to accept any of them.  Mrs. Woollffe and her niece are at
Scarborough, they go to Trouville afterwards.  I may join them.
Despite eccentricities, they suit me better than English people.  How
is the 'Ladye'?  Is she pursuing culture amidst the gloomy grandeur
of Northumbrian shores, and does she bore or entertain you?  Perhaps
it is no use to ask questions, for you have never promised to write.
Would you do so, I wonder, if I told you what a great, _great_
pleasure it would be to me; and I think you know something of the
emptiness of my life.  Do not fancy I am complaining, or that I wish
to excite your pity.  I only leave it to yourself and your own
kind-heartedness, I won't even plead the old 'boy and girl' claim
now.  With you, Lauraine, I have always felt more as if speaking to
myself in a way--you have so much comprehension, so much sympathy.
You know there are few people to whom we ever open up our _real_
selves and most of us go through life really strangers to those who
think they know us best.  But with you and me this will never be.  We
have stood heart to heart in our childish days, and known to the full
each other's faults, weaknesses, capabilities.  How often you used to
lecture me on my selfishness, my headstrong will, my impulsiveness.
Ah me! how often that sweet little child face of yours looks back at
me from the mists of the past.  I have only to close my eyes and I
see you, oh, so plainly, in your simple cotton frock, and with your
great eyes upraised to mine.  I can even feel the touch of your
little hand on my arm; and your voice--will ever a woman's voice on
the face of God's earth thrill my soul and calm my wild heart as
yours has done, and does?  Oh! the pity of it all; the pity of it....

"My pen is running away with me, my thoughts are no longer under my
control.  As I sit alone here, I hear a band in the street below
playing a sad waltz air, an air that we danced to once, this season
that is over.  How it brings you back to me.  I can see the colour of
the dress you wore.  I feel the scents of the flowers in your breast;
you are floating by my side and your heart beats close to mine.  Ah!
the music ceases; you are gone?  I am looking out on the evening sky;
purple and gold and amethyst, the clouds bordered with a fringe of
fire as the sun just sinks away.  Perhaps you are looking at the same
sky; perhaps your thoughts----.  But no, I will not dare to say that.
It is so hard.  Lorry, oh, so hard, to think that we are not now as
we were.  Do you think I have grown sentimental?  I, who was always
so rough and wild and impetuous, and laughed to scorn the
milk-and-water of poetry?  No.  I think you will know what it is that
is in me, and with me, and why I feel like this; as the thoughts flow
into my mind, my hand traces them just as in those past happy days.
I can put into words for you, and you alone, the strange feelings and
wild imaginings that no other human being ever suspects me of
possessing.  This is a long letter.  Perhaps you will smile at it.  I
should not wonder; but, in any case, don't visit its folly on the
writer, who is now and always--Yours only,

"KEITH."


In the reddened glow of the fire-blaze Lauraine reads these words.
Her eyes grow dark and misty; a strange, soft trouble takes
possession of her heart.

"He is quite right," she thinks.  "We two stand to each other in
quite a different light to what we do to any one else.  It was so
natural once to speak to each other like this; but, though I thought
I knew Keith, I am afraid I did not.  I never gave him credit for
such depth of feeling.  I thought, after that day, he would forget
me.  And, after all----"  A heavy sigh breaks from her lips.

She folds the letter together, and puts it in her pocket.  Her
husband's lies on the table, unopened.

"Sir Francis is a good correspondent," remarks Lady Etwynde.  "Is he
enjoying his cruise?"

"Sir Francis!" murmurs Lauraine, vaguely.  "I--I have not read his
letter yet."

"I beg your pardon!" exclaims Lady Etwynde, hastily, and colouring
with embarrassment.  It has not occurred to her that that long, bold,
manly scrawl could be from any one but Sir Francis.  Lauraine takes
up the other letter now.  No closely covered sheets here.  Rather a
different missive:


"DEAR LAURAINE,

"Weather beastly; every one out of sorts.  Awfully slow, if it wasn't
for Lady Jean.  Hope you and the boy are all right.  Ask some people
for next month.  The Salomans will come back with me.--Yours,

"FRANCIS VAVASOUR

"PS.--Will write and say what date to expect us."


"Husbands don't trouble to write long letters," remarks Lauraine,
folding up this curt epistle.  "Sir Francis is going to bring the
Salomans here next month.  I wonder what on earth Lady Jean will do
with herself."

"She will organize all sorts of entertainments, and turn the place
upside down," answers Lady Etwynde.  "Are you going to have a large
party?"

"I suppose so.  I am sorry for it.  I hoped to have a long spell of
rest and quiet."

"You will ask your mother, I suppose?"

"My mother?" Lauraine starts and looks uncomfortable.  "I--I don't
know.  I haven't thought about it."

"I wonder what is in the background," thinks Lady Etwynde to herself.
"She and her mother don't get on; and there is Keith Athelstone.  Did
she make Lauraine marry Sir Francis?  I should have thought the girl
had sufficient strength of mind to hold her own against persuasion.
Still one never knows."

Alone in her dressing-room before dinner Lauraine reads again that
letter of Keith Athelstone's.

"I wonder what I ought to do," she thinks.  "Is it dangerous to go on
with this?  The case looks so different to just 'us two' to what it
would, to an outsider.  And though I might send him away now, we
should be sure to meet again at some period or another.  The world is
never wide enough to part those who _ought_ to be parted.  And the
poor fellow is so unhappy.  No one understands him as I do.  I know
in books whenever there is anything of this sort, any danger, the two
people always go into heroics, and part nobly, and have fearful
sufferings to endure; but then in the third volume everything is sure
to come right.  If I thought, if I knew there would be a third volume
in _our_ lives...  Ah, dear me, when do things ever come right in
real life?  Never, never, never."  With a weary sigh that ends these
thoughts she locks the letter away.

Far enough is she from guessing then what will soon put it and the
writer out of her thoughts.

Meanwhile the Lady Etwynde is seriously disturbed and perplexed.  She
is too genuinely fond of Lauraine not to perceive that she has some
inward trouble weighing on her mind, and yet she does not ask its
nature, or even appear to notice it.  She knows the girl is
pure-minded, loyal, self-controlled; but so have been other women,
who, beneath a sudden tempting--a fierce, wild, incomprehensible
passion--have fallen from their high estate.  And there is that in
and about Lauraine that betrays that she could love very deeply, very
passionately, with that absorption of herself into what she loves
that is so dangerous a trait in any woman's character.  To the weak,
the placid, the prosaic, the cold, such a nature as this is quite
incomprehensible.  To the untempted it is so easy to be strong; to
the cold, so easy to be virtuous.  The conquest of self seems so
possible when you have not to count the cost.  To yourself? ah, no,
not to _yourself_, but to one other who is all the world to you, and
whose pain and sorrow intensify your own till the agony grows too
much for human strength to bear.

Lady Etwynde had no personal experience to guide her through this
maze of conclusions; but she had an immense amount of sympathy, and
an infinite tenderness of nature.  It pleased her to veil and deny
this to the world at large, but it made her all the more beloved by
the chosen few whom she neither could nor would deceive.

For Lauraine she had conceived a strong liking, not the mere pretty,
gushing fancy that stands in lieu of friendship with so many women of
the world; but an earnest and appreciative affection that would serve
and stand by her all her life.  She had a shrewd suspicion that all
was not right with her; some care, some secret trouble, was preying
on her mind, she felt assured.

"Perhaps, in time, she will tell me," she thinks to herself.  "I hope
she may.  I might help her.  Brooding over these things with one's
self always makes them worse.  What a woman can't talk of is bad for
her.  It eats into her heart and life, and absorbs all that is best
in both.  There is a disdain, a weariness about Lauraine unnatural in
one so young.  She loves her child, that one can see; but apart and
aside from him she seems to have no life, no interest.  Apathy,
indifference, despair; those are not things that should be about her
yet; but I know they are.  And why?"

The dinner-bell sounds, and puts an end to her reflections, and she
goes down the great oak staircase in her floating, artistic
draperies, and, despite her beauty and her picturesqueness, actually
has the bad taste to murmur

"What a comfort there are no men here!"




CHAPTER XIV

The storm that threatened at sunset fulfils its prediction as night
draws on.  Lauraine, lying awake in her bed, hears the howling of the
wind, the fierce rush and sweep of the rain, the far-off roar of
angry waves that dash against the dreary iron-bound cliffs.

Once, suddenly, amid the noise of the elements, she fancies she hears
a strange sound from the adjoining room, the room that she has turned
into a night nursery, that her child may be as near her as possible.
She sits up and listens; but all is still.

Again she lies down, but a restless, troubled feeling is on her.
Sleep seems impossible.  She rises and puts on a loose white
dressing-robe, and, softly opening the door of communication, steps
into the nursery.

A night-light is burning dimly, the fire in the grate throws a fitful
blaze around.  She moves swiftly to the little lace-curtained cot,
and bends over the child.

What is it she hears that blanches her face with terror, that strikes
cold and chill to her heart?  Her arms are round the little figure; a
cry arouses the sleeping woman in her bed beside the little cot.  She
springs up and sees her mistress, and in an instant is by her side.

Too well she knows the meaning of that hoarse, strange sound.  The
cold and cruel wind has done its work.  In another moment the
household is aroused.  The stillness of the night is all one tumult
of voices and feet.  Lady Etwynde, startled by the noise, goes
straight to Lauraine's room, and finds it untenanted; but there in
the nursery, with a face white with despair, a vague, pitiful terror
in the eyes that turn from the little figure in her arms to the
pitying faces around, sits the poor young mother.  The struggles for
breath, the hoarse, horrible cry that once heard is never forgotten,
tell Lady Etwynde their own tale.

Some one has taken a horse and gone for a doctor.  The usual remedies
of hot bath and steam have been applied.  They can only wait, wait in
that agony of suspense which is the cruellest suffering of life.
Weeping, frightened, the little crowd fill the room.  The mother
alone is dry-eyed and calm.  Her voice from time to time wakes the
silence with all the fond and tender words the baby ears have grown
familiar with.  Sometimes a quiver of agony passes over her face as
she sees the terrible suffering, as the lovely star-like eyes gaze up
at her in a wondering, imploring way, seeming to beseech help and
ease from one who loves him so.

The night wears on.  The leaden-footed hours drag their way wearily
towards the dawn.  Slowly the wind dies away in sobbing sighs; slowly
the silver streak of coming day paints all the black and lowering
clouds that roll stormily aside.  And then at last the doctor comes,
and the little figure is taken from its mother's arms.  Another hour
goes on to join the rank of those so weighted with agony and fear.
And with it goes on suspense; with it flickers the little life in
those cruel spasms of pain; flickers more and more faintly, watched
with hope that only fades into despair.

The dawn breaks, the brightness of the new day bursts upon a waking
world that welcomes it with life.  But the brightness of the golden
sun shines upon a baby face, that leans white and still and painless
now upon its mother's breast, and something that is not the dullness
of the morning strikes to her heart, stilling its throbs, stifling
its agony of dread.

Her child is hers no longer!

With gentle touch, with pitying words, her friend strives to draw her
from that room.  In vain.

She kneels beside the little cot where the tiny figure lies so still,
so calm now; her tearless eyes riveted on the lovely little face;
eyes so wild, so passionate, so entreating, that none dare meet their
gaze.

"He is only asleep; he has not--left me," she cries: and weeping,
they stand aside and know not what to do.

Then Lady Etwynde bade them all go out, and knelt down by Lauraine's
side.  The tears dimmed her eyes, her gentle heart was wrung at the
sight of this mute, blank suffering.  "Dear, do try and realize it,"
she whispered tenderly.  "It is hard, terribly hard, I know.  But for
him, doubtless it is best."

"Best!"  Lauraine rose to her feet, and looked blankly around.  The
bath, the blankets, the paraphernalia of that brief illness; the
sunlight streaming in through the window; the little figure so still,
so strangely still, all struck on her with a dull, hopeless pain, as
of something missing ... gone out of her life....

Then a low moan broke from her lips.

"Oh, God! let me die too!"

That awful day of pain and grief rolls on.  To Lady Etwynde it seems
the most terrible she has ever known.  Lauraine has passed from one
fit of unconsciousness into another.  They watch and tend her in
ever-increasing fear.  Lady Etwynde has telegraphed to London for a
physician, and also to Mrs. Douglas and Sir Francis, though she fears
the latter will not receive her message without considerable delay,
owing to the uncertainty of his movements.

In the darkened house they all move with hushed steps; and in one
room, where noise and merriment has been so rife but yesterday, there
is _something_ lying white and still, with flowers piled high upon
its snowy covering.  Something from whose angelic beauty all trace of
earth has passed, something in whose presence all grief is stilled,
and tears forget to flow.  Again and again does Lady Etwynde steal
into that room and gaze on the exquisite face on which death has left
no shadow of dread, no trace of plain.  It seems as if only the
mystery of sleep had sealed the marble lids, and left that strange,
soft, trance-like calm upon the once restless body.

The little sinless soul must be happy now, she thinks; but, oh! the
agony that is left, the awful sense of loss, loneliness, despair,
through which that robbed and paralysed motherhood must wade ... the
deep waters ere comfort is reached ... when every sight and sound
will bring back the memory of loss, when every child's voice will
strike sharp as a knife to the aching heart that holds the echo of
but one.  Alas, alas! for the desolation of this sad young life,
that, clinging but to one joy amidst all the storms and sorrows and
weariness around, sees it snatched suddenly from its hold, and looks
out on a future blank and desolate as a starless night, where all is
shrouded from sight and touch, and every landmark obliterated.

Another day comes to replace the wretchedness of this.  Lauraine
rises white and calm from her bed, and still dry-eyed and tearless,
takes up life with its new burden of sorrow.  Arrangements, orders,
all devolve upon her.  No word has come from Sir Francis, but a
telegram announces that her mother will be there that night.  Lady
Etwynde watches her in the deepest distress.  This cold, strange,
tearless grief is worse than the most frantic sorrow.  It seems to
chill all sympathy, to harden her, as it were, against all offers of
consolation.  When Mrs. Douglas arrives it is just the same.  Her
reception of her mother is almost cold, and, pleading fatigue as an
excuse, she retires to her own rooms, leaving Lady Etwynde to do the
entertaining.

Mrs. Douglas, who dislikes Lady Etwynde, grumbles openly at her
daughter's strange behaviour.

"So odd, so cold, so unfeeling, as if I could not sympathize with her
loss--I, who have lost two children of my own.  And to shut herself
apart from every one like that, it is positively unnatural."

"It has been an awful shock to her," says Lady Etwynde gravely.

"Of course, of course; but then, such a baby; and she is young, she
will have plenty more.  But I never knew any one so changed as
Lauraine is since she married.  She is not a bit like the same girl."

"Marriage does change people, you know," answers Lady Etwynde,
looking calmly back at Mrs. Douglas.  "And I never thought Lauraine
was happy."

"Happy!  What in heaven's name does she want?  She has everything
that could satisfy a woman, I am sure, and it was quite a--a
love-match."

"Indeed!" says Lady Etwynde, arching her delicate eyebrows.  "On
whose side?"

Mrs. Douglas passes by this question loftily.  "She is of a cold
nature, and utterly different to me.  I am sure if she had had to
bear all the troubles and worries I have put up with during my life
she might talk of unhappiness.  Lauraine's unhappiness must be
something like a crumpled rose-leaf, I imagine."

Lady Etwynde only looks quietly at her for a moment.  "I don't think
you quite understand her," she says.  "There may be natures that
cannot find happiness in position, society, and--diamonds.  Of course
it is very odd that they should not do so, some sense or faculty must
be wanting; but all the same, they do exist."

"I hope she is not going to begin one of her lectures on culture,"
thinks Mrs. Douglas in inward perturbation.  Aloud she says: "It is
very awkward, Sir Francis not being here.  And yachting about, like
he is doing, perhaps he won't get the news for ever so long.  Who has
made all the arrangements?"

"Lauraine," answers Lady Etwynde.

"But how odd, how cold.  Why does she not have some one--the
clergyman, or the doctor?"

"I don't think it is out of a mother's province to act as Lauraine is
doing," answers Lady Etwynde, composedly.  "My only regret is that
she is so calm, so self-controlled.  If she could only cry!"

"Ah!" murmurs Mrs. Douglas, plaintively.  "I told you she was so cold
and hard.  Even as a child she seldom cried."

"Tears are no sign of deep feeling," says Lady Etwynde, sternly; "far
otherwise.  Some of the shallowest and most selfish people I have
known, can cry for the least thing.  Lauraine's grief is very
terrible to me, because she will not give it natural outlet.  I know
what the child was to her."

Mrs. Douglas looks at the fire, and is silent.

She feels irritated, annoyed with Lauraine.  Annoyed because she lets
people see her unhappiness in the life chosen for her; annoyed
because of her coldness and indifference towards herself.  They have
never had much in common; but since her marriage, since the
suppression of that letter from Keith Athelstone, Lauraine has never
been the same to her mother.

"So ridiculous not to make the best of her position," she thinks,
impatiently.  "What on earth is the use of pretending to be a martyr?
Perhaps now that she has lost the child she will think more of the
father."

The father!  He is at that moment stretched on a pile of cushions on
the deck of his yacht, the blue, rippling waters turned to silver in
the moonrays, and his eyes gazing up at the liquid, brimming orbs of
the Lady Jean.

"Tired--with you?" he murmurs.  "That could never be!"


And his wife stands broken-hearted by the side of their little dead
child!




CHAPTER XV

  The body faints sore,
  It is tired in the race.


Do you know Erlsbach?

Very likely not.  You won't find it in any map or guide-book, or
directions to fashionable spas and watering-places.  You won't find
it by this name either, for its people call it differently.  It is
just a little dusky spot on the confines of the Austrian Tyrol, a
little village shut in by pine forests washed by silvery waters;
quaint, old world, unremarkable, but beautiful exceedingly.

In the warm June weather Erlsbach is at its best.  So green, and
fragrant, and cool, with soft airs blowing from the pine forests, and
the gleam of snow on the mountain heights, and the emerald waters of
the river shining in vivid brightness where the sunrays slant amidst
the greenness of the boughs.  It boasts of but one hotel does
Erlsbach, a little old-fashioned hostelry, with nothing to recommend
it save that it is very clean and picturesque, and its people are
honest as the day.

To Erlsbach, and, as a matter of course, to the Kaiser Hof, come one
June evening a party of two ladies and two maids, a courier, and
luggage _en attendance_.  Their arrival is expected, their rooms are
taken; the best rooms, with a balcony overlooking the river, and that
far-off view of the mountain heights beyond, where the purple light
of evening is melting on the whiteness of eternal snows.  When the
bustle of arrival is over, one of the two ladies comes out on the
balcony and stands there for long, looking out at the pretty,
peaceful scene.  A voice from a room within speaks after a time:

"Do you like it, Lauraine?"

The figure moves, turns half round.  "It is like a poem," she says,
softly.  "Like it?  One can hardly say that; one _feels_ it."  The
speaker advances and joins her.

"Yes; you are right.  I only came here once; it was years ago, and my
heart was heavy with a great sorrow.  I left it behind me, Lauraine;
buried it amid the lonely woods and mountain ways.  Oh, my dear, my
dear, if you might do the same?"

A sigh parts the beautiful grave lips of Lauraine Vavasour; she grows
very pale.  "That cannot be," she says, faintly.  "I could never
forget easily; and this, this was part of my life--myself.  Do not
let us speak of it, Etwynde; it hurts me still."

"People say to talk of their troubles lightens them."

"I am not like that then.  My sorrow is shut in my heart.  I cannot
bear to profane it with speech."

"But it makes it so much harder to bear, Lauraine."

"Not to me; nothing on earth, even your sympathy, could lighten it."

Lady Etwynde is silent.  Her thoughts go back to that dreary, awful
time when the child's death was yet so new a thing; it is nearly nine
months ago now, and Lauraine has been all that time in the gloomy old
mansion on the Northumbrian shores.  The funeral had been long over
before Sir Francis returned, and then he had made but a brief stay,
and gone to Scotland with some friends.

"Fretting could do no good," he said philosophically, and he hated
the gloomy quietude of Falcon's Chase, and was only too glad to leave
it.  Lady Etwynde stayed with Lauraine all through that dreary
winter; she could not bear to leave her alone in her grief and
despair, for the sorrow seemed but to take deeper root in her nature.
Even all Lady Etwynde's gentle sympathy could make no way.  She
half-feared and only half-comprehended this new phase in her friend's
character.  For she could not know that Lauraine felt a terror of
herself now; that it seemed to her as if the one safeguard she had
clung to had been swept from her hold, and she lay anchorless,
shelterless on the great dark sea of life, beholding no hope or ray
of light, turn where she would.

The chill of winter passed into the fair, sweet month of spring; but
no change came to her.  Nothing seemed to thaw the ice about her
heart.  A strange chill and silence from the outer world rested upon
her life as it was now.  Of all her many friends and acquaintances
none seemed to remember her or heed her.  Keith had written again and
yet again; she had never answered him once.  She _dared_ not.  His
sympathy, his presence would have been a comfort too great not to be
dangerous, and the more she longed for them the more rigorously she
denied them to herself.  With the spring her husband wrote to know
whether she wanted to come to town for the season.  She read the
letter with a shuddering horror.  The season!  To dance, drive,
gossip, kill time in a round of empty pleasures; sate herself with
luxury and extravagance.  The thought seemed loathsome to her now.
Her youth and all that was best in her seemed to have died with her
little child.  Her eyes seemed ever to have that look in them that
has so frightened and pained her friend; the look as of tears that
could not fall.

She was awfully, terribly changed, both in body and mind, and when
Lady Etwynde paid her a flying visit, tearing herself from æsthetic
joys and the glories of the Grosvenor Gallery Exhibition, and endless
_réunions_ among the cultured, she was shocked and alarmed at the
alteration.

"You must leave here, or you will go melancholy mad!" she said,
imperatively; and Lauraine, having arrived at that stage when she was
too spiritless and too indifferent to oppose any vigorous scheme,
yielded passively, and was borne off to Erlsbach.

Sir Francis, of course, could not come.  He liked London, and was not
going to give up its thousand and one enjoyments for the sake of an
invalid's whim.  Her mother offered voluntarily to sacrifice herself
in the matter; but Lauraine would not hear of it, and in the end she
and Lady Etwynde, under charge of an experienced courier, set out for
Germany and, travelling by slow and easy stages, arrived one warm
June evening at quaint, pretty Erlsbach.

"But, Lauraine," says Lady Etwynde, continuing the conversation after
a long, thoughtful pause, "have you ever considered that it is like
putting yourself in rebellion against God to go on like this?  All
strokes of sorrow are sent for some wise purpose.  We do not see it,
believe it, at the time; but, later on----"

"Ah," interrupts Lauraine, "that is just it.  It has not come to
'later on' with me.  I had but one thing to make me happy; it has
gone.  Don't expect me to be consoled in a few months."

"But, my dear, you have your husband, your duties.  Do you know it
seems to me as if you were, in a way, estranging yourself from him?"

"He can find plenty of amusement in the world," says Lauraine,
coldly.  "Little Frank was nothing to him, except just simply the
heir who would come after him in due time, and keep the estates in
the family.  But to me----"  She breaks off abruptly.

The faint wind from the pine woods blows over her head and ruffles
the soft dusky curls above her brow.  In that dim light, with her
pale, beautiful face turned upwards to the purple sky, she looks so
young, so fair, so sorrowful, that a rush of tears dims Lady
Etwynde's eyes as she gazes at her.  "I didn't think she would have
taken her sorrow to heart like this.  How little one knows, after
all!" she thinks to herself.


A week drifts by.  Amidst that tranquil pastoral loveliness, amidst
the beauty of the woods and streams, in the whole dreamy, simple life
they lead, Lauraine rests and rejoices in such quiet, unecstatic
fashion as is left to her.  Her sorrow seems less hard and cold a
thing here; the angel face of her lost darling comes with a more
tender grace to her memory.  She can talk and even smile with
something of the old playful witchery that used to be hers.  There is
always something new to see; there are no landmarks here as at
Falcon's Chase to recall the footsteps of that baby life whose
journeying was so short a one.  She begins to feel a little interest
in places and things once more.  She likes Lady Etwynde's talk, even
when it may be on culture and ethics; she can listen to her when she
reads out, which she does admirably as well as judiciously.  On the
whole, there is a decided improvement about the mental "tone" that
delights Lady Etwynde, though she never appears to notice it.

Life and worldly cares, and even worldly joys, seemed sometimes to
sink into almost insignificance amidst these mountain solitudes.
They were so grand, so sublime, so immovable.  Their lessons came
home to Lauraine's aching heart, and soothed and comforted it
insensibly to herself.  She grew less sad, she brooded less over what
she had lost.  She had no hope, nothing to look forward to; yet still
the present so steeped her in peace and rest that it seemed to her in
after years as if these fragrant forests, this wilderness of ferns
and flowers, these foaming waters, and far-off gleam of shining
glaciers and crowning snows, had possessed some magic power that
insensibly soothed and lulled her heart's long pain.

Late one afternoon she and Lady Etwynde are returning from a drive to
a little village some two miles distant.  The sun is just setting
above the forest heights, there is alternate light and gloom among
the heavy foliage, those beautiful shades of green and gold that make
up so much of the charm of a wood.  Lady Etwynde is driving rather
quickly, and the road is narrow.  Before them she sees the figure of
a horseman proceeding leisurely along.  At the near approach of the
ponies' rapid trot he draws his horse aside to make room.  Lauraine
leaning back in the little low carriage, gives a careless glance up
as she passes, then all the pallor of her face flushes deepest
scarlet; she starts forward with an exclamation of amazement.  Lady
Etwynde notices it, and reins in the ponies.  "Mr. Athelstone!  Is it
possible?" she says.

In astonishment quite as genuine, Keith draws the bridle, and bends
towards the two figures.

"What a strange meeting," he says, as he shakes hands first with
Lauraine, then with Lady Etwynde.

"I thought you were in London," Lauraine says quickly.  After one
wild leap of joy her heart seems to grow still and cold with a great
dread.  What evil fate, she wonders, has thrown him across her path
now?

They are all too genuinely astonished to be embarrassed, and Keith
proceeds to explain how he has been mountaineering for the last month
in the Tyrol district; how his headquarters at present are that very
little village they have just visited; and how he has ridden over to
Erlsbach from idle curiosity, to see what the place is like.  Of
course there remains nothing for it but to invite him to the Kaiser
Hof, and an hour later the trio are sitting at dinner, the table
drawn close by the open window, and the fresh pine-scented air
blowing in cool and soft from the mountains.  Keith and Lauraine talk
very little to each other.  The brunt of the conversation falls on
Lady Etwynde, and she in no way objects.  Keith has always been a
favourite of hers, and they have many sharp and witty arguments,
while that pale, grave figure in the soft draperies listens and
smiles, and feels at once disturbed and restless, and yet glad.

Sooner or later they would meet.  She had known that always, but had
never dreamt of it being so soon, or so strangely.

Somehow in life the meetings we expect never do take place as we
expect them.  We may rehearse our little scenes as carefully as we
please, we may arrange our looks, our words, the very tones of our
voices, but when the actual _rencontre_ does occur it is sure to be
utterly different, and the carefully-arranged programme is never
carried out.

It is so with Lauraine now.  She has sometimes longed, sometimes
dreaded to meet him, but always imagined it at some distant time and
in some totally different manner; and now Keith is sitting at her
table, her own guest, smiling, talking, looking at her to all
appearance as unconcerned and forgetful as if that "garden scene" had
never been enacted.

He is a better actor than herself, and he determines to be it.  She
shows that she is troubled, pained, perplexed.  He ignores everything
that might lead to that past, is careless, cynical, indifferent as of
yore; but all the time his heart is beating with tumultuous pain; he
is thinking how sadly altered she is, how changed from the bright,
beautiful Lauraine of his boyhood, and yet dearer to him in her
sufferings and sorrow than in any years that are past.  It is hard
work to keep down the thoughts that are thronging, the love that is
leaping, the joy that is thrilling his every sense; but he knows it
must be done, and he succeeds in doing it and in deceiving Lauraine.
The cloth is removed.  The soft dusk settles on the pretty quiet
scene without.  Lady Etwynde, who dislikes a glare of light, blows
out nearly all the illumination of candles in the room, and they sit
there by the window watching the stars come out one by one, talking
less now, but with something grave and earnest in the talk that it
has lacked before.

At last Lady Etwynde rises, and, saying she has letters to write,
moves away to a little inner room, partitioned off by curtains from
the one where they have all been sitting.  It is solitude, yet not
solitude.  The sense of being together, the knowledge that their low
tones are unheard, is just restrained by the feeling that another
person is close at hand.  Keith is silent for some moments, then
bends towards Lauraine.

"You never answered my letters; I could hardly expect it.  But I do
hope you believe I felt for your grief?"

"Yes," she answers, simply; "I always felt sure of that."

"I am glad you say so.  When you never wrote I thought you were
offended, indifferent, perhaps.  It has been a terribly blank time
for me."

"I think you have no right to tell me that," she says, flushing and
paling with nervous agitation.  "I cannot help you, and it only adds
to the sufferings of my own life that yours is also sad."

"Sad!" he echoes, wearily.  "If you only knew _how_ sad.  But you are
right; I ought not to speak of that.  How strange it seems to meet
you here; almost makes one believe in Fate!  To think that I rose
this morning and rode off haphazard, not even guessing you were
within a hundred miles of me, and now, at evening, I am sitting by
your side!"

"How is it you have forsaken the London season?"

"It I told you the _real_ truth you would be angry, and I cannot
utter conventional lies to you, Lorry."

She trembles a little.  Her eyes go out to the shining river that
mirrors the silver glory of the starlight.  At her heart a dull pain
beats.  "Your friends, the Americans, where are they?" she asks
evasively.

"In Paris, I believe.  At least, they may have left now; but they
were there up to May.  Nan is mad about Paris."  "Nan," be it
remarked, is what he always calls Miss Anastasia Jefferson.  Lauraine
knows this, and smiles a little.

"You and she are as great friends as ever, I suppose?" she remarks.

"She is a jolly little girl," Keith answers, carelessly.  "Yes, I
suppose we are friends in a way.  We are always quarrelling, and yet
always making it up."

"Why don't you--marry--her?" asks Lauraine.

He stares at her as if uncertain of what he has heard.  "Marry Nan!
Good Lord!  I never dreamt of such a thing!"

"Other people have," continues Lauraine; "even the girl herself, I
fancy."

He laughs a little bitterly.  "What fad have you got into your head?
Nan looks upon me as a sort of elder brother.  There has never been
anything of 'that sort' between us.  As for marrying, well, _you_
ought to know I am not likely to do that."

"I think you ought to marry," says Lauraine, very quietly.  "You see
you have wealth and position, and yet you lead such a 'homeless' kind
of life.  That is the only word that expresses it.  And some day
surely you will think of settling down; you cannot be always like
this."

"_You_ counsel me to marry," he says, with bitterness.  "Have you
found the experience so pleasant a one?"

The crimson colour rushes all over the proud fair face.  "That has
nothing to do with it," she says, coldly.

"Has it not?  Well, if I choose to be faithful to a memory, that is
my look out.  I am not one to forget easily, as I have told you
before."

"And you don't care for Miss Jefferson?" asks Lauraine, unwisely.

He looks at her in silence for a moment, and under the strong
magnetism of his glance, her eyes turn from the scene without and
meet his own.

"I think _you_ should know," he says, very softly.

There comes the sound of a rustling skirt, a closing door.  Lady
Etwynde has left the inner room; they are alone.  In an instant he is
kneeling by the low chair on which she sits.  Her hands are clasped
in his.

"Oh, Lorry, Lorry!" he cries; "it is so hard!"

The passionate plaint thrills to her very heart.  She lays her hands
on either shoulder, and looks down into the pain-filled depths of the
blue eyes.

"I know it, dear," she says, very gently.  "Is it not hard for me
too?"

"You are so cold, so different, and then you have your home, your
husband, your----.  Oh, forgive me, darling!  How could I be so
thoughtless?"

He sees the spasm of pain on the white face, the sudden quiver of the
soft red lips.

"I--I have nothing now!" she groans, despairingly, and her two hands
go up to hide her face.  A storm of passionate weeping shakes her
from head to foot.  Keith is alarmed, distressed, but he is wise
enough to rise and stand quietly by.  He attempts no consolation.

The storm abates at last.  Those tears have done Lauraine good.  She
has been cold and hard in her grief for so long a time.  She also
rises, a little ashamed, a little confused.  "Let us go out on the
balcony," she says, and he follows her without a word.

It seems like a dream to him; a dream that will never be forgotten,
that will haunt his memory with a vivid thrill of pain whenever he
feels the scents of mountain air, or sees the gleam of quiet stars.
With them, too, he will see the little balcony of the quaint old
"Hof," and a slender figure with draperies of dusky black, and a face
white, solemn, inexpressibly sad that looks back to his.

"Keith," she says, very gently, "there has come a time when I must be
frank with you.  You say you do not forget, that you cannot.  In that
case, if you have any honour at all, you must see that you should
avoid me.  Of myself, of my pain, I will not speak.  What use?
Between us two lies a barrier we can never cross.  When you say such
words to me as you have said to-night, you make the very question of
friendship an impossibility.  Is there any thought in our minds that
in any way is cold enough for _that_.  I doubt it.  Mind, I say
'ours.'  I make no pretence at deceiving you."

"You do not deny that you love me?"

"Of what use?" she says.  "I made a fatal error in my marriage.  But
error or not, I must keep to it and its consequences.  Only, Keith,
if you had any pity, and mercy, you would avoid me, leave me to fight
out my life alone.  At least I owe my husband--fidelity."

A hundred words rush to his lips.  It is in his mind then to tell her
of what her husband really is; of the scandals that are whispered in
club and boudoir, over cigarettes and Souchong, but something
restrains him.  It would be mean, he thinks; and, after all, would it
make any difference to her?  Had she been any other woman....  And,
after all, she loves _him_, not her husband.  On that small crumb of
comfort he feeds his starved and aching heart, standing there beside
her, silent, troubled, fighting against every wild and passionate
impulse that bids him fling honour and scruples to the wind, and
snatch at the perilous joy of a sinful happiness.

"Yes," she says, with a heavy sigh.  "I must at least give that.  The
best part of me and my life is laid in the grave of my little child.
Often I think I shall never feel glad again, but after to-night I
leave it to you whether you are to make my life harder for me, or
help me to struggle against myself."

His eyes gleam with momentary anger, petulance, pride.  "You give me
a hard enough task, I hope," he says passionately.  "And yet your
last words hold all the tempting that could possibly beset a man.
Why should I save you from yourself?  By heaven if you loved me, if
you only knew _how_ I love you, you would not count the cost of
anything that stood between us and our happiness!"

"Would it be happiness?" answers Lauraine.  "I think _not_, Keith.
Is a guilty love ever happy?  Does it ever last?  If it did the world
would not teem with forsaken women, nor the rivers of our great
cities bear such burdens of shame and despair."

"You do not know me, if you doubt.  Have I not been true to you,
since, boy and girl, we stood together, and played at sweethearts in
the old Grange garden at Silverthorne?  Till I die I shall remember
you, and love you, Lorry."

"Other men have said the same, and have forgotten."

"Other men!  Yes; but you surely know me well enough to believe me."

"It is because I believe you that I wish to save you deeper pain.
You cannot command your feelings, and I--I must not listen to you
now.  It is wrong, shameful."

He moves impatiently.  "Your words are very cruel.  But to me you
have always been that.  You could not be true to me even for a few
years."

She shudders as if a blow had struck her.  "It is ungenerous to speak
of that now; you know the fault was not all mine."

But Keith is in no mood to listen to her.  His blood is on fire, his
heart is hot and angry, and he feels that sort of rage within him
that longs to spend itself in bitter words and unjust reproaches,
even to one he loves as dearly as he loves Lauraine.  There is a sort
of savage satisfaction in making her suffer too, and he pours out a
fury of wrath and reproach as she stands there mute and pale and
still.

"I am not ice, like yourself," he says, in conclusion, "Other women
love, and forget all else for love.  You--you are too cold and
prudent.  I am young, and you have wrecked my whole life, and given
me nothing but misery.  I wish I had died a thousand deaths before I
had seen you!"

A shiver as of intense cold passes over her.  She knows Keith's wild
temper of old, but she had not thought it was in him to speak as he
had spoken to her.  She forgets that a great love borders almost on
hate, so intense may be its passions, its longing, its despair.

"After all," says Keith, with a mocking laugh that grates terribly on
her ear, "why _should_ I not follow your advice as well as your
example?  Why should I eat my heart out, and waste my life on an
empty love?  You have told me to leave you; that you wish to see me
no more.  Very well; _this_ time I will take you at your word.  I
will leave you, and let the future prove who was right or wisest.
I--I will go away!  I _will_ forget!"

"It is well," she says, her voice low and faint.  "I deserve all you
have said, and more.  I have only brought sorrow to you!  Go away,
live your own life, forget me, and be happy again."

"Those are your last words?"

"Yes.  My life is hard and sad enough; you would add to it shame and
misery and undying remorse, and call that a proof of--love.  Forgive
me if I cannot see it in the same light as yourself."

"And I say you do not love me, and never did, or you would know----"

"Very well," she interrupts, "believe that.  It is best that you
should."

"And I am to go now?" he says, sorrowful and hesitating.  "If you
send me from you to-night, Lauraine, I will never come back.
Remember that."

Both of them are hurt and angry now, both beset with cruel pain, and
waging that terrible conflict with passionate love and wounded pride
that is at once so ill-judged, and resentful a thing.

Lauraine looks steadily away from the entreating, watchful eyes;
away, away to the far-off mountain range swept with faint grey
clouds, silvered by the clear moonlight and the haze of the shining
stars.

"If he only knew," she thinks, in the depths of her aching heart, "if
he only, only knew!"

But he does not know.  To him she is only cold, calculating,
unloving.  Right and pure he knows in her mode of loving and
thinking; but what man who loves as Keith loves can see right and
purity as they are?

"I have never asked you to come back," says Lauraine, faint and low,
"and be very sure I never will.  I am sorry that you are angry with
me.  Perhaps to-morrow you will be sorry too.  But I know it is best."

"Good-bye then!"

She turns, and gives him her hand.  He looks at her long, and the
blue eyes grow misty, the fire and anger die out.  He bends suddenly
forward and touches her fingers with his lips.  He does not speak
another word, only drops her hand and goes.

The echo of his footsteps dies away.  The door closes with a heavy
sound.  With a stifled sob Lauraine falls on her knees, and leans her
head against the low railings of the flower-covered balcony.

"Dear Heaven! how hard it is to do right!" she moans.

The wind stirs the pine boughs, and the stars shine calmly down.
They have seen so much of trouble, have heard so much despair, and to
them a human life is such a little space to sorrow in, or be glad.




CHAPTER XVI

  Cry, O lover,
  Love is over.


When Lady Etwynde comes back, she finds Lauraine lying cold and
insensible on the little balcony.

In great alarm she tries to recover her to consciousness, and at last
succeeds.  With a heavy sigh the dark eyes open, and Lauraine rises
and goes back to her low lounge by the window, and there lies faint,
white, and exhausted, while, with a great and tender pity, her friend
hovers about, speaking soothing words, and asking nothing of the
cause of this strange fainting fit.  She can guess it well enough.
Half an hour passes.  Then Lauraine lifts her head with a little
languid smile.

"You must think me very foolish," she says.

"Why should I?" asks Lady Etwynde, simply.  "My dear, I think I know
what is troubling you.  I have known it long.  Do not speak of it
unless you wish, if it pains you in any way.  But be sure of my
sympathy always."

"I am sure of it," answers Lauraine.  "I think I have never made a
friend of any woman but you.  You are always so good, and one always
feels one can trust you.  But you are right.  Something _is_
troubling me very much.  I feel to-night as if life was altogether
too hard!"

"Who of us does not feel _that_ at some time or other?" says Lady
Etwynde, sadly.  "A time when to look back or to look forward seems
alike equally hard; for during the one we think of what 'might have
been,' and during the other we dread to think what _may_ be.  There
are two very sad things in this life: the waste of love, the dearth
of happiness.  Both of these are with you now.  They were with me
once.  But I lived through the struggle, and you will do the same.
You think it is impossible now.  Ah, my dear, so did I; so does every
one who suffers.  And yet physical force drags us on whether we will
or not."

"I have been very foolish," says Lauraine, the tears standing in her
eyes as they look out at the quiet night.  "When I was young, a mere
girl, Keith and I betrothed ourselves.  You know my mother was his
guardian, and all our childhood was passed together.  No one could
influence him or manage him as I could.  He was always impulsive,
reckless, passionate, but oh! so loving and so generous of heart.
Well, as we grew older the love seemed to grow with us.  Then my
mother began to notice it.  She became alarmed; we were parted; but
still neither of us forgot.  At last Keith spoke to my mother.  Of
course she laughed, and treated it as a boy's fancy.  He had nothing,
and we were not rich; at least, so she said always.  He grew angry,
and said he would go abroad, and make a fortune.  She said 'very
well; when he had made it he could come back and claim me.'  In the
end he went to America.  We were not allowed to correspond, and year
after year went by.  I heard nothing from him or about him.  Then I
was introduced to London life.  I had a season of triumphs, gaiety,
amusements.  I will not say it weakened my memory of Keith, but at
least it filled up the emptiness of my life, and I was young, and
enjoyment seemed easy enough.  In my third season, I met Sir Francis
Vavasour.  From that time my mother's whole soul was bent on a
marriage between us.  I cannot tell you now the thousand and one
things that combined to throw us together, to wind a web about my
careless feet.  The memory of Keith had grown less distinct.  Four
years had passed, and no sign.  I began to think he had forgotten.
Later on, I found my mother had deceived me.  He _had_ written to
her, speaking always of his unfalterable fidelity; then came the news
of brighter prospects of a great fortune in store; of entreaty to
tell me, and let me hear from him.  She did nothing of the sort.  She
only told me that if I did not accept Sir Francis it meant ruin to
her.  That her debts were enormous; that I had cost her a small
fortune in these three seasons; that--oh, I cannot tell you it all
now.  I am not naturally weak-minded, but I suffered myself to be
persuaded.  I never attempt to hold myself blameless; still, had I
known about Keith....  Well, on my wedding-day, I received a letter
from him.  He was possessor of a large fortune, he loved me more than
ever, and he would be in London, at our house, on that very day.
Imagine my feelings.  It was all too late then.  Nothing could be
done.  I had to school myself as best I could to meet my girlhood's
lover an hour after I had become Sir Francis Vavasour's wife.  It was
a terrible ordeal.  Poor Keith!  Oh, what I felt when I saw what I
had given him to bear.  He was half mad, and I--oh, how sick and
ashamed and wicked I felt.  We parted again, and for eighteen months
we did not meet.  Then he came to Rome one winter, and I was there.
He greeted me like any other acquaintance.  I thought he had
forgotten.  Gradually our old friendship was resumed.  Gradually he
became my constant companion, and the confidence and sympathy and
interests of the past seemed to awaken, and be with us both again.  I
dreamt of no harm.  He never by word or look betrayed that he loved
me still.  I thought it was all over and done with, and feared no
danger.  I was not unhappy.  Sir Francis was very kind, and I had my
boy.  I troubled myself in no way about what might be said, Keith had
been a sort of brother to me so long.  We left Rome and came to
London.  Then it was that he betrayed himself; then it was that I too
learnt I cared for him as I had no right to do."

"And the Gloire de Dijon roses were left under the cedar tree,"
murmurs Lady Etwynde, faintly.

Lauraine starts and blushes.  "Yes, it was that night.  I almost hate
to think of it, and yet--oh, Etwynde, _can_ I help loving him?  _Can_
I tear him out of my heart?"

"My dear," says her friend, gravely, "if love were within our power
to give, or to withhold, life would be an easy enough matter for most
of us.  It has been at cross purposes always.  I suppose it won't
change tactics, even for our advanced age."

"Well," sighs Lauraine, wearily, "I did what I could, but Keith made
me promise that I would not banish him; that I would let him see me
sometimes still; that----"

"My dear," murmurs Lady Etwynde, gently, "you were never so foolish
as that?"

"I was," answers Lauraine.  "I--I pitied him so, and he seemed so
desperate, and I had done him all the wrong.  I am not a bit of a
heroine, Etwynde.  I have little moral strength, and he promised he
would speak of love no more, so--

"So you believed him?" interpolates Lady Etwynde.  "Of course, man
like, he--kept his promise?"

"Until--to-night," falters Lauraine.  "When I saw him, when we met as
we did, I cannot tell you how awful I felt.  It was as if Fate had
purposely thrown him across my path when I was most weak, and most
unhappy."

"And what have you done?" asks Lady Etwynde, pityingly.

"I have sent him away--for ever!"

"Lauraine, had you strength--

"Oh," says Lauraine, with a little hysterical laugh, "we quarrelled
desperately first.  He said some dreadful things to me, and I--I
don't know if I was not equally hard and unjust.  But in any case it
was better than sentiment--was it not?  The next thing we shall hear
is that he is going to marry Miss Anastasia Jane Jefferson."

"Lauraine, you are jesting!" exclaims Lady Etwynde.  "What, that
little American doll who 'guesses' and 'calculates,' and is only a
few degrees better than Mrs. Bradshaw Woollffe?  Impossible!  I know
she has a _penchant_ for him--at least, it looked like it--but after
loving you----"

"Oh, it will be 'moonlight after sunlight,'" says Lauraine, bitterly,
"if I may copy Tennyson and say so.  Why should he make a martyr of
himself?  I can be nothing to him, and it is all shame, and sin, and
horror now.  Oh, God! that I should live to say so--my darling
boy----"  A sob breaks from her.  She thinks of Keith--bold, bright,
_debonnaire_ Keith, with his sunny smile and his bold, bright eyes
that for her were always so soft and loving; Keith, with his merry
ways and wild freaks, and steadfast, tender heart; Keith as he _was_,
as he never again can be to her, in all the years to come!

"It is all my fault--mine!" she cries between her heavy sobs.  "And I
have made him so unhappy; and if he goes to the bad, if he gets wild
and reckless, oh, what shall I do?  How can I sit and bear my life,
and look on _his_, as if it were nothing to me?"

Lady Etwynde kneels beside her and puts her arms round her in
silence.  "It will be hard, terribly hard," she says, tenderly.  "But
oh, my dear, you have had strength to do what was right to-day.  You
will have strength to bear the consequences."

"Was it right?" wails Lauraine, in exceeding bitterness.  "He said
not.  He called me cold and calculating, and said I have spoilt all
his life now, and he is so young, and I----  Oh, how I could love him
now!"

"Hush!" whispers Lady Etwynde, gently; "you must not think of that.
Right!  Of course it was right, Men are so selfish, that unless a
woman ruins herself for their sake they will always say she does not
love.  _Love!_ Faugh, the word as they mean it is different to our
interpretation.  I have not patience to think of it.  Love is
something purer, holier, nobler than sensual gratification.  It is
sympathy, it is fidelity without reward; it is consecration without a
vow.  Did we take our teaching of it from _them_, Heaven help us all.
Thank God, something within us helps us to the right, the pure, the
better part of it.  Lauraine, do not waste your pity thus.  What
right had he to dishonour you in your grief, your loneliness, by any
such words as these?  If indeed he loved you, you should have been
sacred to him for your child's sake, even though he ignored your
husband.  Can you not see it too, dear?  As for saying you have
ruined his life, that is cowardly.  He does not love you worthily or
he would never have uttered so weak a reproach."  She ceases.  She
feels the shudder that runs through the slender figure.  She knows
her words hurt and sting, but she is pained and angered and sore
distressed.  She feels a hatred and intolerance of Keith Athelstone's
selfish passion.

"You do not know," murmurs Lauraine; "you cannot judge.  Of love no
one can, save just the two who love.  For them it is all so
different, and everything else looks of such small account."

A warm flush comes over her face; she dashes the tears away from her
eyes.  Lady Etwynde unloosens the clasp of her arms, and stands up, a
little stern, a little troubled.

"You are right.  An outsider must always take a calmer and more
dispassionate view of the matter; but I hope in time you will see him
as he is.  Once you were married, your lives lay apart.  He should
not have come near you, and, from your own account, he has broken all
laws of honour, and put the selfishness of passion before everything
that is good and honest and pure."

"You are hard on him," says Lauraine, quietly.  "You don't know him
as I do.  No one ever did seem to understand Keith but myself."

"He is certainly no paragon of virtue," Lady Etwynde answers,
contemptuously.  "But, my darling, don't let us quarrel over him.  He
is a man, and I know what men are when they love.  As for you, you
have behaved nobly, despite your pain.  Believe me, the thought will
bring its own comfort in time, and--you say--he will never come back
again?"

"So he said."

"Has he never said that before?"

"Yes," answers Lauraine; "on my wedding-day."

"I hope he will keep his word this time then," says Lady Etwynde.
"He can do you no good, and he only makes your life more unhappy.  My
dear, be wise for the future, and avoid him."

"That is my only wish now," answers Lauraine, rising from her low
chair and passing her hand wearily across her aching brow.  "And my
only safety, too," she adds, in her own heart.

But Lady Etwynde hears only the first sentence, and is glad of it and
content.

"He will not be faithful," she thinks, as she moves by Lauraine's
side to her chamber on the next floor.  "Men never are.  So much life
has taught me!"




CHAPTER XVII

"After a storm comes a calm."--It seemed as if a calm, the calm of a
great despair had settled on Lauraine.  All human love had passed out
of her life; and that life itself looked grey, colourless as an
autumn sky that has known no sunshine.  But there was something in
this dull stupor that kept the sharpness of pain in abeyance, that
left her, to outward seeming, much the same as ever, and rejoiced
Lady Etwynde's heart.

"After all," she thinks to herself, "she could not have loved him so
very much."

She does not attempt to allude to the confidence of that night, nor
does Lauraine return to it.  Just for two or three days she watches
with anxious eyes the arrival of the post: she is half fearful of a
letter from Keith, a letter that will be a sort of blaze of anger,
and upbraiding, like his own last words.  But there comes neither
letter nor sign.

After a week or two Lauraine begins to get restless.

"This is a place to sleep and dream in," she says to her friend; "I
want to see some life again.  Let us go to Baden or Monaco."

Lady Etwynde is amazed.

"Will Sir Francis object?" she asks.

Lauraine smiles with faint contempt.  "He never troubles himself
about what I do," she says.  "We will go, and if he objects, we can
leave again!"

Lady Etwynde yields, and they go to Baden.

Lauraine seems now to have as great a horror of solitude as before
she has had of gaiety.  She is always out, always restless.  No one
they know of the fashionable world is at Baden, it being yet too
early in the season.  It is crowded with Germans and Austrians, and
adventurers of all nationalities, who throng the pretty Kursaal under
the shadow of the pine-crowned hills.

Lauraine makes numerous acquaintances, and is always inventing
projects of amusements, such as picnics, excursions, _jêtes_, drives,
and balls.  She goes to concerts and theatres, she is one of the
loungers in the shady alleys of the Lichtenthal; she goes to
supper-parties that to Lady Etwynde seem reckless and _risqué_, and
meets all her friend's feeble remonstrances with the unanswerable
argument that her husband does not mind, and therefore no one else
need trouble their head about it.

She seems so horribly, unaccountably changed that it fills Lady
Etwynde's mind with dread and pain.

Better the morbid grief, the dreary apathy of the past, than this
feverish and unnatural gaiety, this craving for excitement and
pleasure.  Just as suddenly as she has gone to Baden, so suddenly
does she tire of it.  "She will go down the Rhine," she declares,
"and stop anywhere that is pretty and picturesque."  The change of
programme delights her friend, and they leave their circle of new
acquaintances desolate at their sudden departure.

The lovely scenery and the constant change seem for a while to quiet
Lauraine's restlessness.  She takes a fancy to Bingen, and stays
there for a month; but it distresses Lady Etwynde to see how pale and
thin she is getting, how weary and sleepless her eyes always look.

A letter comes one day from Sir Francis.  He is coming to Baden for
the races; he is going to run a horse for the Prix de Dames.  They
had better remain abroad and meet him there.  He will arrange for
rooms at the Bairischer Hof, or D'Angleterre, as a lot of people are
coming at the same time.  Meanwhile he hopes Lauraine is tired of
moping, and intends to be reasonable again.

She reads the letter quietly through, and then hands it to Lady
Etwynde.

"I can scarcely expect you to continue giving up your time to me as
you have done," she says.  "But this arrangement suits me very well.
It is quiet and pleasant here, and I shall remain on till the time
fixed for Baden.  But you--there is your home, your own friends----"

"Unless you are tired of me," interrupts Lady Etwynde, "I am not
going to run away.  I do not think you are either in health or
spirits to be left alone."

They are at the Victoria Hof.  Their rooms are very pleasant; their
life has been more like what it was at Erlsbach, spent chiefly in the
open air, in drives and rambles and excursions on the river, and
visits to the beautiful old Rochus Capelle, which, for Lauraine, has
endless interest, and of which she never seems to tire.

This evening they are both sitting by the open window overlooking the
Rhine.  In these hot summer nights Lauraine has cast aside her heavy
black dresses, and wears chiefly white, with knots of black ribbon
here and there.  Lady Etwynde thinks how lovely she looks, sitting
there, with the sunrays touching her dusky hair, her soft snowy gown,
her slender hands that are idly folded on her lap.

Instinctively she comes forward and kneels by her side.  "Am I to go,
Lauraine?" she asks, softly.

For all answer Lauraine clasps her round the neck, and bursts into
tears.  "No, no; a thousand times no!" she cries, weeping.  "You are
the only one left to me to love.  Don't leave me quite desolate."

"I will not," answers Lady Etwynde, softly.  "I wish I could be of
some use--of some help; but in these cases the tenderest sympathy
seems to hurt.  No one can help us."

"You speak as if you too had 'loved and lost'?" says Lauraine, wiping
the tears from her eyes, and looking at the beautiful, noble face
beside her.

A faint warmth of colour comes over it; the proud head, with its
golden halo of hair, droops a little.  "Yes," she says, "I have.
Sometimes I think it was my own fault, after all I was too proud, too
exacting.  Shall I tell you the story?  Would you care to hear?"

"Indeed, I would," said Lauraine, earnestly.

"He was a soldier," begins Lady Etwynde.  "I was seventeen; romantic
to my finger-tips.  He, thirty years or more; bronzed, bold,
stalwart, a king among men, I always thought.  We met at my first
season in London, loved, were engaged.  He was of good family, but
not rich.  My parents objected strongly at first; but I was their
only child, and they had never crossed whim or wish of mine.  Of
course I gained my point.  Oh, how happy I was!  It was like all the
ecstasy of dreams, all the fancies of poets, all the purity and
waking passion of first love steeping my life in golden glamour.  I
only lived, watched, thought for him, and he--all the time--he
deceived me!"

Her voice breaks.  The bitterness and anguish of that time seems
present over again.  The colour fades from her cheeks as she kneels
there in the radiant moonlight.

"No man comes to thirty years of age without a 'past' of some sort,"
she resumes.  "But I, in my childish ignorance, imagined him another
Bayard.  He had been so brave, his name was crowned with so many
laurels.  He seemed the very soul of honour, of truth, and I--I loved
him so.  And one night, oh, shall I ever forget that night?  We had
gone down to Richmond to dinner.  We had been out on the river
afterwards.  It was a warm June night, so fair, so still, so
fragrant, and he rowed the boat himself and the rest of the party
left us far behind.  Suddenly another boat passed us; there were two
men in it, and a woman.  I remember noticing she had something
scarlet wrapped about her and was very dark; foreign-looking I
fancied.  They were rowing fast, their boat shot by.  I heard a cry,
the sound of a name--_his_ name--and he was sitting before me, his
face white as death, his eyes full of horror and doubt.  'Good God!'
I heard him cry, 'and she is _not_ dead?'

"My heart seemed to stand still.  Then I grew very calm and cold.
'Who is that woman, Cyril?'  He stared at me like one in a dream, and
turned the boat back without a word and rowed me to the hotel.  Then
he led me up one of the quiet river walks, and standing there before
me told me the whole sickening, miserable tale.  There may have been
extenuation in it.  I saw none.  I was young and ignorant of life and
of men, and cruel, I suppose.  He called me so.  I could only cling
to one fact--that she had been his wife.  What mattered to me the
folly, the caprice, the infatuation that had chained his hot youth
and held him powerless now?  What mattered to me anything, anything,
save that he was lost to me, that my idol was shattered, my heart was
broken.  'You told me you had loved no other woman as you loved me,'
I said, scornfully; 'and all the time, all the time, you had given
her the surest, truest proof of love a man can give.  Pity!  No, I
have no pity!  You made your choice, you must abide by it.  If you
were free this hour I would not marry you now.  You have deceived me.
Your love was a pretence; perhaps you call it also such names as you
have called hers.  Go to her, your wife; I never will voluntarily
look upon your face again.'  Oh, Lauraine, was I cruel, was I unjust;
God knows.  Oh, the bitterness, the agony, the shame of that night.
I felt as if I hated him in the new sharp fever of jealousy that had
come to my heart.  I hated to think he had belonged to another, held
her to his heart, kissed her, loved or seemed to love her.  My whole
nature seemed to change.  I could only think he had deceived me,
whether willingly, or mercifully did not matter.  Love, youth, joy,
hope, all seemed to die out of my heart.  Nothing he said seemed to
soften me.  I would not listen, I would not yield, I would not pity.
He left me, and I never saw him again.  The next news I had was that
he had gone abroad on foreign service.  I had seen his name from time
to time, but of his life, the life I once so fondly hoped to share, I
know nothing!"

Lauraine touches the trembling hands.  "You were hard on him, I
think," she says gently.  "I suppose he thought her dead--that he was
free."

"He said so," answers Lady Etwynde.  "Oh, yes, and doubtless he
believed it.  He could not have dared to offer such an insult to me,
or my family.  But what I resented was that he should have kept the
story back, that he should have pretended that I was his first, his
only love, and all the time _she_ had been his wife.  I could not
forgive that!"

"But, my dear," says Lauraine, gently, "you may have had his first
_real_ love.  The other was but a youthful folly, a hot-headed
infatuation.  Does any man come to us with his heart pure and free?
Few, I think, if any.  We cannot judge them by ourselves.  That is
how so many women wreck their lives.  They expect too much.  No man
can ever be what a girl's dreams would make him.  But it is so hard
for her to believe that."

"I know it now," answers Lady Etwynde.  "I have learnt my lesson in
bitterness and grief.  But I think it has done me good.  I have
forgiven him long ago.  I shall never see him again to tell him so, I
suppose; perhaps he would not care even to hear it.  But I am happier
since I could pardon and pity his weakness, only--my Bayard he could
never be again!"

"And of her?  Do you know anything about her fate?" asks Lauraine,
forgetful of her own sorrows in this new interest.

"I heard she was dead.  She was a vile, cruel woman.  He divorced her
afterwards, but what was that to me?  What can anything be to me now
that concerns his name, his life?"  There comes a long silence.  The
thoughts of both are busy with sad memories.  As Lauraine looks at
Lady Etwynde's face she sees it is full of pain, but her eyes have a
dreamy look, as the eyes of one who sees some sweet vision afar off.

"I was wrong, I suppose," she says, slowly.  "A woman who loves must
forget _herself_ in that love, and I, I thought too much of my
wounded pride, my lost ideal.  But I have never held a thought of
love for any other man.  The lips that he kissed were his first, they
will be his for ever.  I have never forgotten; and now I am thirty
years old, and my parents, as you know, are dead, and I live alone,
and am looked upon as a marvel of eccentricity, and have my school of
apostles and fool them to the top of their bent.  Sometimes life
seems a horrible travesty of all that is dignified and pure, and
sometimes a jest that one laughs at and forgets.  But no one knows me
as I really am, save you, Lauraine.  To most people I suppose I
hardly seem a woman.  But my true self and my lost love live a life
apart, a life of dreams, sad but yet beautiful.  A life that feeds
itself on memories, memories that are recalled by the colours of
every changing sky, the scents of leaf and flower that touch one like
a sound of music.  Ah! those nights, those mornings, those scenes
that are the same, yet _not_ the same, how they make one's whole soul
sick with longing, and mad with regret!"

"And you have borne all this so long?" says Lauraine, wonderingly.

"Yes," she answers; "it seems long, does it not?  And I have not
pined away much.  I don't look like a love-lorn maiden, do I?  I have
not gone into a decline, or fallen away to a shadow, or grown grey
with sorrow, or done anything I ought to have done according to
romancers.  I suppose no one I know ever suspects that I have had a
love-story, much less that I cherish its memory."

"Your nature must be a very constant one," says Lauraine.  "You make
me ashamed of myself.  No wonder Keith reproaches me with
unfaithfulness."

"I think fidelity is an established instinct," says Lady Etwynde.
"It is very much an accident of our own natures.  To me, it seems an
utter impossibility to even think of caring for another man.  Cyril
Carlisle was my first lover; I gave him all that was in me to give.
It was all my life to me.  I suppose--to him--it was but another
experience."

"Yours is a grand nature," says Lauraine, looking wonderingly at the
calm, noble face.  "You shame me for myself.  If I had but kept true
a little space----"

"One can never judge of another's case by one's own," answers Lady
Etwynde.  "No doubt you were tried, hurried into it.  I know, oh! I
know.  You are not the first girl who has told me the same, nor will
you be the last.  The mothers of Society do it all for the best,
doubtless.  Love seems such a poor, contemptible thing in their eyes
in comparison with--settlements.  Oh, yes! that is so always.
Perhaps they forget their own youth; one does, they say, when one
outlives romance.  And I suppose an 'Establishment' is better than
poetry any day.  They are wise, after all.  Year after year the
season has its martyrs.  Girls are brought out and introduced with no
higher aim or object set before them than a 'great marriage.'
Fashion and Society expect it.  I suppose it is what they were born
for!  Thank God! my parents were neither ambitious nor mercenary.
Perhaps I too might have been over-persuaded.  I don't think it
likely.  Still---"

She hesitates and looks compassionately at Lauraine's sad face.  "You
must try and be brave, dear, and bear your life as it is.  Regrets,
repining, sorrowing won't make it any better.  You say you are weak,
but I don't think you are so weak as all that.  And there is one
thing I have wanted to say to you of late.  You will pardon me if it
seems intrusive.  But, do you know you are behaving very coldly, and,
I think, unwisely, towards your husband?  You leave him alone, to
other temptations that your presence would restrain.  All these
months you have not seen him, you scarcely even write with more
warmth or interest than you do to your steward; and, after all, he is
your husband.  Nothing can alter that; and he loved you very dearly,
and no doubt he does still.  Can you not see that your duty to him
demands even more than the sacrifice you have already made?  I know
it is hard, terribly hard.  You say there is no sympathy, no
comprehension between you, and your heart is aching with this
forbidden love, and he must seem in a way hateful; but you were not
honest with him quite, if you promised to marry him, and yet held
back your heart.  You see what I mean?"

"Yes," Lauraine says faintly, "I see."

"Duty demands much, but it also repays much,", continues Lady Etwynde
gently.  "Heaven knows I am not fit to preach to you; but in the
world, as we know it, Lauraine, there are so many faithless wives, so
many divided households.  Oh, my dear, don't you add to the number!
You have many enemies of whom you know nothing, and they would gladly
seize your name, and smirch its purity with scandals, and whispers,
and evil words.  I want you to be brave, and face them all, and live
out your life nobly and well.  I know I am bidding you do a hard
thing; but it is right, and I am sure you see it."

Lauraine bends her head down wearily, and lays it on her friend's
shoulder.  She feels spent, tired, exhausted.  The tears throng to
her eyes, her heart aches with dull and ceaseless pain.  "I do see
it!" she half sobs.  "I will try."

"May Heaven give you strength!" murmurs Lady Etwynde, and she kisses
her on the brow.




CHAPTER XVIII

It seems strange and painful to Lauraine to go back to the gaiety and
brilliance of Baden after the quiet and rest of pretty, picturesque
little Bingen.

A large party of her old friends and acquaintances are at the
Badischer Hof, and her husband meets her at the station.  Lady
Etwynde has returned to England.

"You are not looking well," says Sir Francis.  "And how thin you have
become."

"I have not been very strong; this hot weather tries me so," she
answers; and then they enter their carriage and drive to the hotel in
the cool, sweet September twilight.  Lauraine forces herself to talk,
to try and appear interested in the forthcoming race; but the sense
of strangeness produced by long absence and utter want of sympathy
with each other's tastes and pursuits makes itself felt again and
again.  It is a relief when she finds herself alone in her own room.
But with Lady Etwynde's words ringing in her ears, with her new
resolves firm and close to her heart, she will not listen to whispers
of distaste and discontent.  She enters more into the business of her
toilette than she has done since her child's death.  She astonishes
her maid by her critical objections.  When she descends she looks
like the Lauraine of old.  Her cheeks are flushed with excitement,
her eyes burn with feverish brilliancy.  Her soft, snowy robes seem
to make her beauty more fair, more young, more pathetic.  The first
person to greet her is the Lady Jean--Lady Jean, handsomer, if a
little louder and stouter than ever, arrayed in a wonderful Louis
Quatorze costume, with glittering steel buttons and ornaments.
Consistent with her new _rôle_, Lauraine greets her very cordially,
and even smiles with less repugnance on "Jo," who is one of her
special detestations, and who looks even uglier, and more Jewish than
of yore.

They are a very brilliant party assembled here, and the theme on
every tongue is the coming race, and the wonderful English racer
owned by Sir Francis.  Lauraine wonders a little to find the women
apparently as conversant with racecourse slang as the men--at the
fluency with which Lady Jean discourses on "training," and "hedging,"
and "running form," and "hard condition."  It seems so long since she
was with women of this sort, women who ape the "lords of creation" in
manners, dress, and morals, that she feels bewildered and out of
place amidst them all.

When dinner is over they saunter out to the Kursaal.  The band is
playing, the _salons_ are crowded.  The lights sparkle amid the
trees, and fall on fair faces and lovely toilettes, on sovereigns of
the _demi-monde_, supreme and defiant; on other sovereigns and
celebrities, quite unobtrusive, undistinguished.  They mingle with
the crowd.  Lady Jean, Sir Francis, and Lauraine are walking on a
little in advance of the others.  A fountain is throwing up showers
of silver spray, the white gleam of a statue shines through the
foliage; on the chairs beneath the trees two people are sitting--a
man and a woman.

The light falls on her face: it is very lovely, though owing much to
art.  Her hair is of too vivid a gold to be quite natural; the great
grey eyes are swept by lashes many shades darker than their original
hue.  She is talking and laughing loudly.  The man leans carelessly
back on his seat, tilting it to an angle that threatens its upset and
his own.  Perhaps it is that fact, reminding her so of a trick of
Keith's, that makes Lauraine look a second time.  Her heart gives a
wild throb, she feels cold and sick with a sudden shame.

She sees it is Keith himself....

Just as they pass, the tilted chair is pulled back to its level with
a ringing laugh.

"I declare to you it's impossible to speak when you will not look,"
says a shrill French voice.

His eyes go straight to that passing figure.  He starts, and his face
grows darkly red.  The eyes meet for a second's space.  In hers is
pained rebuke, in his--shame.  There is no word, no sign of
recognition.  But all the night seems full of dizzy pain to Keith.


"It is very annoying," murmurs Lady Jean the next morning, as she
sits at the breakfast-table.  "Why could they not have gone somewhere
else?"

"What is annoying?" questions Lauraine, looking up from her chicken
cutlets at the clouded, handsome face opposite.

"Why, those Americans; one meets them everywhere!  Hortense tells me
they arrived last night--that Woollffe woman, you know, and her
niece; and they have the next rooms to mine; and, of course, we will
meet them everywhere; and oh! I am so sick of them, you can't
imagine!"

"Mrs. Woollffe is a very kind-hearted woman," murmurs Lauraine.  She
is pale and languid, and her eyes have a weary, sleepless look in
them that tells of many hours of wakefulness.  She and Lady Jean are
alone.

"Kind-hearted!" echoes Lady Jean.  "My dear, so is our greengrocer's
wife, or our dressmaker, for all we know; but that is no reason why
we should receive them in our drawing-rooms.  Now, I have done my
best to avoid this dreadful woman, for two seasons, and here she is,
next door to me!"

"You are not bound to associate with her, if you are so exclusive,"
says Lauraine, a little contemptuously.  "But there are many women
received in society who have not half the honesty and sterling worth
of Mrs. Bradshaw Woollffe."

"Of course," laughs Lady Jean, with unfeigned amusement; "but honesty
and sterling worth are rather humdrum things, don't you think?  And
she is _so_ vulgar!"

"That should be a recommendation, I fancy," says Lauraine.  "Almost
every one is vulgar nowadays."

"Ah, but there is a distinction!  When a woman is really well born,
and has an established position, she may do what she likes.  It is
these mushroom millionaires, these _nouveaux riches_, with their
lined pockets and their 'piles,' made out of every imaginable horror,
adulterating, swindling, coal-mining, shoe-blacking, heaven only
knows what, that are so odious and yet so formidable a power!  They
push, they struggle, they scheme, they spend their money like water,
they have a craze for society, the very highest, the very best.  They
take our snubs and insults, and flatter and fawn just the same only
for a card in their halls, a half-hour passage through their
drawing-rooms, the honour and glory of a 'name' to figure in a
society journal as one of their guests.  Faugh! it is sickening!"

"But the society who eats and drinks and amuses itself at their
expense is alone to blame," says Lauraine calmly.  "If people had
sufficient dignity and self-respect to oppose such innovations, to
keep these people at a distance, they could not force themselves in."

"But they are always so abominably rich," laughs Lady Jean.  "That
excuses so much, you see; and then they let us treat them pretty much
as we please.  It is a case of get all you want, give what you like."

"To me that always seems a very mean doctrine," says Lauraine gravely.

"Do you treat Mrs. Bradshaw Woollffe as an equal, then?" asks Lady
Jean ironically.

"If you mean do I know her one day and cut her the next, do I go to
her balls and be blind when we pass in the Row, I must say--no.  She
comes to my house, I go to hers.  She was extremely kind to me in
Rome, and I never forget kindness.  She is not very ladylike, I
acknowledge, but I should be sorry to hurt her feelings because of
that.  I do not consider a lady can ever affect her own dignity by
her behaviour to those whom society counts her inferiors.  For my
part I like to be consistent.  If we receive such people on account
of their wealth, we take them at their own valuation.  We have no
right to smile on them one minute and insult them the next."

"You were always peculiar," says Lady Jean, with some asperity.  "I
suppose that comes of high principles and poetic fancies.  I always
go where I can be amused myself.  It is the best thing to do after
all."

"To amuse oneself?" questions Lauraine.  "And afterwards?"

"Oh, after that--the deluge," laughs Lady Jean, shaking out the
countless lace ruffles and frills of her cambric morning gown.  "I
could not take life _au grand sérieux_; it would kill me.  Oh, I know
what you would say.  Excitement is frivolous, useless, wearing to our
nerves, destruction to health and beauty.  Perhaps so.  But you are
blessed with a serene temperament; I am not.  I like to live, to
enjoy, to be in one whirl from morning till night.  I don't care
about long life, peace, tranquillity.  No, I want all I can, _while_
I can."

Lauraine looks at her curiously.  She knows very little of Lady
Jean--only just so much as one woman in society does know of another
who moves in the same set, dances at the same balls, pursues the same
routine of enjoyments.  But she knows she is popular and admired, on
good terms with the world at large, and an immense favourite with men.

"You don't agree with me, of course?" pursues Lady Jean, sipping her
claret, and looking amusedly at Lauraine's grave face.  "I suppose
you have aims and ambitions and 'views' like your friend Lady
Etwynde?  What a curious thing, by the way, that she should be a
friend of yours, or indeed, of anybody's except a peacock.  She must
be dreadfully uninteresting!"

"I think her charming," answers Lauraine.  "She is one of the few
true women it has been my lot to meet."

Lady Jean feels a little uncomfortable.  She has long passed the
stage of blushing, or she would feel the colour mounting as she meets
Lauraine's calm, frank gaze.

"Is there any _arrière pensée_?" she thinks.  "Is she less blind than
we imagine?"

"I can't imagine a woman getting enthusiastic _about_ a woman," she
says coolly.  "Seems unnatural.  Of course, I have no doubt the
æsthetic is very charming to those who can appreciate her.  I never
could."

"I suppose not.  I should scarcely think you had much in common,"
answers Lauraine dryly.

"Still," says Lady Jean, rising carelessly from the table, "it was a
little odd and unnatural that you should go away with her, and leave
your poor husband all to himself.  If he hadn't been one of the most
good-natured men----"

"Pardon me," interrupts Lauraine, very coldly, "I would rather not
discuss my husband with anybody.  You may rest assured I had his full
sanction for my 'unnatural' conduct.  And, if you know anything of a
mother's feelings at all, you might suppose that I scarcely felt
inclined for the gaieties and frivolities of London life after so sad
a trial."

"Ah, yes; I forgot--the poor little angel," murmurs Lady Jean, her
eyelids drooping to hide the angry flash in her black eyes.  "But--I
may be wrong--I don't know, only to me it always seemed that a wife's
first duty was to her husband."

"Pray, has my husband been complaining of me?" inquires Lauraine
haughtily.

Lady Jean smiles involuntarily.  "My dear, no, of course not.  I only
said--

"I quite understand," says Lauraine.  "Perhaps I was selfish in my
grief.  I don't know.  I had not meant to be; but he chose the world,
and I, solitude.  I should not be so unwise again, rest assured."

"What does she mean?" says Lady Jean to herself uncomfortably.  "And
how strange she looked.  Surely, surely, she cannot suspect!"

An hour afterwards she is strolling with Sir Francis through the
grounds of the Kursaal.

"_Mon cher_," she says, with a little mocking laugh, "I do believe
your wife is jealous.  It is very amusing, but you had better be
careful all the same.  I object to be one in a _chronique
scandaleuse_."

"Lauraine jealous?" exclaims Sir Francis.  "What put that idea in
your head?"

"She herself," answers Lady Jean.  "She says for the future she will
not be so neglectful of you.  She is afraid she left you too much
alone.  Is not that charming news?  Does it not arouse very sweet
emotions?"

"Don't talk folly, Jean," mutters Sir Francis savagely.  "You know,
or ought to know, how much I care for Lauraine.  A poor, weak,
milk-and-water creature.  Heavens! how could I have ever fancied
myself in love with her?"

"But you were, you know," says Lady Jean calmly.  "Only, like all
men, you deny it when your fickle fancy changes.  It is always the
_last_ who is the only real love."

"I know well enough who is my real love, last or first," he says
hoarsely; and his eyes flash bold, ardent admiration at her, under
the drooping foliage of the trees.

"Hush!" she whispers, and with a warning glance around.  "You must
not say such words--in public!"




CHAPTER XIX

  We whisper, and hint, and chuckle,
  And grin at a brother's shame.


Lauraine sees no more of Keith during the next week, but she hears
from Mrs. Woollffe that he has gone to the Black Forest.

"I don't know what's come to him," complains the garrulous American.
"Guess he's off his head sometimes.  Those dollars have been an
unlucky windfall for him.  He's not like the same chap he was in New
York.  He never looks pleased noway, and he was the merriest,
larkiest young fellow any one could wish to see when I knew him
first.  I thought Nan would wake him up a bit, but she don't seem to
answer; and now he's run off from Baden-Baden as if it was a den of
rattlesnakes; and they do say (she drops her voice mysteriously) that
he's with that notorious Frenchwoman Coralie Lafitte.  My word, if
that's so, won't she make the dollars fly.  All the same, I'm
uncommon sorry for Keith.  Never thought he was one of _that_ sort."

Lauraine grows hot and cold with shame as she listens.  She had
thought there would be nothing harder for her to do after giving him
up, after that last sad parting; but to hear of his recklessness, his
sins, to know that she may be in a measure to blame for both cuts her
to the heart.

She sits quite silent, her hands busy with some crewel-work that she
is doing.  Mrs. Bradshaw B. Woollffe is paying her a morning visit.
Lady Jean has fled at the first approach of the enemy, and so
Lauraine has to entertain her alone.  Mrs. Woollffe talks on, on; but
her listener hears nothing of what she says.  Her thoughts are only
with the man whose life she has wrecked.  Her storm-shattered heart
aches and throbs with memories freshly brought to life.  She has done
what was right; she has severed her life from his, but if it makes
him evil, desperate, hopeless; if it sends him to profligate men and
bad women, if his bright young manhood is laid waste and desolate,
was it, could it be right, after all?

Her influence, her presence, had always been a restraint upon him,
and she had denied him both--cast him out to the fire of temptations,
the recklessness of despair.

It was a horrible thought; no one knows how horrible save a woman
whose soul is pure, whose heart is passionate, who sees the life she
loves and fain would bless, pass out and away from her keeping, and
knows that it is beyond her power to recall or claim its fidelity;
who sees it lose itself in evil, and seek forgetfulness in wild and
feverish excitements, and knows that a word, one little word might
have held it back and kept it safe and unharmed.

"I must not think of it, I _must_ not," she says to herself in scorn;
and she looks up from the tangled crewels and tries to interest
herself in Mrs. Bradshaw Woollffe's gossip, and promises to drive
with her in the Lichtenthal Allée, forgetful of Lady Jean's disgust.

"Well, I'll go," says her loquacious friend at last.  "Guess I've got
heaps of shopping to do this morning, and Nan will be that cross for
keeping her waiting!  Good-bye, my dear; good-bye.  Hope I haven't
tired you.  Four o'clock then."

The door closes; Lauraine is alone.  She sinks wearily back in her
chair.  The silks and canvas fall unheeded to the floor.  She is
afraid of this new pain that has come to her--this jealous hatred and
horror of the woman who is holding Keith in her evil bondage.  Her
strength seems all fled.  The long, empty, colourless days that
stretch before her, that have to be lived through, look doubly dreary
in this hour.  "I thought the worst bitterness of my cup had passed
my lips," she moans.  "I had not thought of this."

Her husband had asked her carelessly about Keith, and she had spoken
of that brief meeting in the Tyrolean valley.  Sir Francis had not
heard of his being at Baden at all.  A sort of dread comes over her
as she thinks of the chance of other meetings, of the added pain that
each fresh account of his actions may bring her.  He had, indeed,
known how to make her suffer, and the suffering could have no anodyne
now.

With an effort she calms herself at last.  Her hours of solitude are
few, and she must appear her usual calm, grave self to the friends
who are about and with her daily life.  They see no change in her
to-day.  Even Lady Jean's sharp eyes detect no difference; but the
laughter, the chatter, the gay banter, the naughty stories, all seem
dull and far-off to her ears.  She marvels whether these men and
women have hearts to feel, or souls to suffer?


It is the day of the race.  A day warm and brilliant with sunshine,
cooled by a fresh soft breeze, that brings all the scents of the pine
forests in its breath, and stirs the fluttering laces and ribbons of
the women's toilettes, and the waving flags that stream from the
Pavilion and the Grand Stand and other points of vantage.

Lady Jean and her husband, Sir Francis and Lauraine, come in the same
carriage.  As the ladies descend and sweep along the pretty
grass-covered course they come face to face with Mrs. Bradshaw
Woollffe, her niece, and Keith Athelstone.

Lady Jean's presence gives Lauraine fair excuse.  They only exchange
bows and pass on.  She marvels that she feels so calm, that neither
flush nor pallor betrays what the sight of that young, haggard, weary
face is to her.  She is annoyed to see him here, having heard no word
from his staunch ally.  Afraid of a second meeting, she begs her
husband to take her to her seat.  Lady Jean grumbles, but the men are
eager to be off to the enclosure, where the hero of the day,
Aldebert, is calmly awaiting the important moment when he is to make
or mar the fortunes of those who support him.

"You have no bets on?" says Lady Jean to Lauraine, as they sit side
by side, and survey the glittering scene, all life and light and
colour now.

"No, not even a solitary pair of gloves," smiles Lauraine.  "To tell
you the truth, I never thought about it.  Betting seems stupid."

"You appear to think most things stupid that other women do," says
Lady Jean tartly.  She has a great deal more than gloves on this
race, and Lauraine's speech annoys her.  "Good gracious! here comes
that awful woman again.  Lauraine, you must change places; let me get
on your other side.  I should positively die if I had to sit next her
for a quarter of an hour."

She rises impulsively from her seat.  Lauraine does the same.  There
is a little bustle, a little laughter, a chatter of tongues, and then
Lauraine finds herself with Keith Athelstone, instead of Mrs.
Bradshaw Woollffe, by her side.

It is impossible to avoid shaking hands with him now, and she does
so.  Neither of them speaks, however; but the constraint is not
noticed by the rest of the party, for the horses are coming out of
the enclosure now, and every eye turns to the starting point.

Aldebert wins the race; but to Lauraine everything seems confused and
indistinct, and in comparison with Lady Jean's excitement and delight
at Sir Francis' success, her own manner seems strangely cold and
unconcerned.  Amidst the hubbub and excitement, the noise of voices
and shouts of congratulation, Keith bends nearer to Lauraine.

"I have some news that will please you, I hope," he says.  "I am
going to marry Nan, as you advised me."

For one startled instant Lauraine is quite unable to speak or move.
She feels the hot blood surging to her brain; she turns dizzy and
faint.  But the importance of self-command is present to her mind.
She forces herself to appear as little moved as possible.  Her voice
is perfectly calm as she says: "I am glad to hear it.  Pray accept my
congratulations."

And then Sir Francis joins them, and there are more congratulations
and a great deal of noise and excitement, and Mrs. Bradshaw Woollffe
and her party leave the stand and go down to the pretty racecourse,
and Lauraine sees Keith by the side of Miss Anastasia J. Jefferson,
and wonders is she dreaming--is all this real?  For her the gay scene
is altogether dull and wearisome.  Turn where she will, look where
she may, she only sees that haggard young face, only hears the
shrill, ringing laugh of the pretty American, whom every one calls
"Dresden China," and who looks like a dainty little Watteau
shepherdess in her flowered silk costume and big hat, and piled up
sunny curls.

Long before the close of that day the news is on every tongue.  The
young millionaire is going to marry "Dresden China," and Lady Jean
looks maliciously at Lauraine, and laughs and nods her head
mysteriously, saying she'll believe it when she sees it.

"Too sudden to be much good," she says, as they discuss the event
that evening at dinner.  "Though she's been spoons on him for ever so
long."

"She's awfully pretty," remarks Sir Francis.  "Why shouldn't he care
for her?"

"No reason why he shouldn't.  I only say he doesn't," answers Lady
Jean.

"So much the better," says an _attaché_ to the Austrian Legation, who
makes one of the party.  "Love matches are a mistake.  Never yet knew
one turn out well."

"Poor Keith," says Lady Jean.  "Fancy tied to those dreadful people.
Her father sold rum and molasses, didn't he, in New Orleans; and she
says 'guess,' and 'spry,' and 'cunning.'  And then the aunt."

"I don't think their colloquialisms are worse than our slang," says
Lauraine coldly.

"Oh, I know you are enthusiastic on American subjects," says Lady
Jean meaningly.  "I beg your pardon for my remarks."

"There is no necessity," Lauraine answers, looking at her with calm
surprise.  "I know you dislike Mrs. Woollffe, and of course you are
not bound to acknowledge her niece--

"As Mrs. Athelstone," interrupts Lady Jean.  "No, I suppose not--only
for Keith's sake----"

She pauses.  Lauraine feels the colour mounting to her brow.  There
is something so irritating in this patronage and she knows that Lady
Jean is about the last person who ought to talk of a _mésalliance_.

"I thought you said just now that she would never be that," she says
very coldly.  "Your words and opinions seem somewhat inconsistent."

"I shall be very much surprised if she ever is," responds Lady Jean.
"All the same, one ought to prepare for the worst."

Good-humoured as is her speech, light as is her laughter, Lauraine
feels that there is a covert meaning in both.

She would have known she was right could she have heard the
conversation between Sir Francis and herself later on that evening.
After the fatigue of the drive to Iffezheim and the excitement of the
races the whole party profess to be too tired for anything but a
quiet evening of "loo," mingled with music and gossip and cigarettes.
Then Sir Francis saunters over to where Lady Jean sits--her dark,
picturesque beauty looking its best in the mellow lamp-light.

"What did you mean to-night by your remarks about young Athelstone?"
he asks abruptly.

Lady Jean gives him one quick glance of her flashing eyes.  "Mean?
nothing, of course.  What _should_ I mean?"

"That's just what I want to know.  You don't think he cares for this
girl?"

"Not the value of a brass farthing!"

"But you think----!"

"My dear old donkey, I _think_--of course I think.  I keep my eyes
open, which you don't.  I know a little sum in arithmetic called two
and two, which you, I dare say, have long forgotten.  That is all."

"I wish I knew what you were driving at," mutters Sir Francis sulkily.

"What should I be 'driving at'?" asks Lady Jean innocently.  "Only
when a young man has been entirely devoted to one woman, and then
without rhyme or reason suddenly proposes to another for whom he
doesn't care a straw, then--well, the little sum in arithmetic comes
in useful.  That is all."

Sir Francis looks at her half in anger, half in perplexity.

"That's the devil of women," he says with impatience.  "They hint and
hint, and won't speak out."

"And that's the--ahem--of men," laughs Lady Jean.  "They see, and
see, and remain so blind."

"I have seen nothing."

"So much the better for you," says Lady Jean, with a shrug of her
handsome shoulders.  "You might have been annoyed, or uncomfortable;
most likely the latter.  You have not my secret of taking things
lightly.  Now, if I saw you making love under my very eyes I should
only be amused, or think what bad taste you had to prefer any other
woman to me.  _On se console toujours, mon ami_.  You do it one way,
Lauraine another, I another.  But I suppose we each have our own
views on the subject of the consolation, or--consoler!"

And she laughs again: soft, amused, pleasant laughter, that seems to
hold no malice, to be the outspring of no evil thought.  And all the
time her heart is full of both.  For, as virtue shames vice, and
purity shows up the grosser contrast of immorality, so she feels
ashamed and rebuked by the words and presence of Lauraine.  "If ever
two people loved, they love," she had said to herself that past
season; and now it had all come to nothing.  There was no hold over
Lauraine, no _petite histoire_, nothing to smile and sneer at.

"If she had only compromised herself ever so little," she thinks
to-night as she looks at the lovely calm face, the grave dark eyes.
"And now this projected marriage.  It is awfully queer.  If she had
been like other women."




CHAPTER XX

"The old place is just the same, isn't it?" says one tall bearded man
to another, as they stand at the window of the Naval and Military
Club, and look out at the lighted streets in the grey November dusk.

The man addressed turns his keen dark eyes on his companion's face.
"The same--yes, I suppose it is.  It's only people who change, you
know.  Places and things haven't their excuse."

"Well, changed or not, I'm glad to be back again," says Major
Trentermain of the Twelfth.  He and his friend, Colonel Carlisle,
have just returned from Burmah, and are enjoying the comforts of
club-life, the reunion with old friends, the hundred-and-one things
that, familiar enough once, have become of double value since
sacrificed for the exigencies of foreign service, and lost through
years of hard work and fierce warfare, and the myriad discomforts of
climate and life abroad.

"London is the best place in the world to enjoy life in," continues
Trentermain.  "I've been looking up old friends to-day.  Such
welcomes!  Didn't expect to find so many in town.  But the country's
beastly just now; even the hunting's spoilt by the weather."

"Old friends," echoes his companion drearily.  "I wonder if I've got
any left.  I feel like a Methuselah come back; it seems a lifetime
since I went abroad."

He passes his hand over his short-cut iron-grey hair, and half sighs.
He is a splendid-looking man.  Tall, erect, powerful, with keen dark
eyes and a heavy drooping moustache, dark still in contrast to his
hair--a man who carries his forty-five years lightly enough, despite
hard service and trying climate.  His eyes gaze out on the darkening
streets, where the lamps are shining, and his thoughts go back to
some thirteen years before, to a time of fierce joy and fiercer
suffering.

"I wonder where _she_ is now?" he thinks to himself.  "Pshaw!
married, of course, long ago.  I wonder I have not forgotten her.
Thirteen years of such a life as mine ought to knock all memories and
romance out of one."

He laughs a little bitterly and impatiently, and then plunges into a
discussion with his friend, which resolves itself into an arrangement
to dine and go to the theatre together afterwards.

"I have promised to look in at Vane's rooms," says Major Trentermain.
"You'll come too, won't you?  He is full of some new
craze--æstheticism, he calls it.  All his people have gone in for it
extensively, and he seems to be bitten with the same mania.  You
really should see his rooms.  Quite a study."

"Oh, yes; I'll come," answers Carlisle indifferently.  He is rarely
anything else but indifferent now.  Nothing rouses or interests him
except, perhaps, "big game" or hard fighting.

They go to the Gaiety.  To Carlisle the performance seems idiotic in
the extreme.

"Do come away.  I can't stand this trash," he mutters impatiently.

"But that's Belle Burton singing," remonstrates Trentermain, who is
more "up" to the goings on of London as it is, than his friend.

"What of that?" demands Carlisle.

"Every one's talking of her.  She's----" (Then comes a mysterious
whisper.)  Colonel Carlisle frowns and tugs his heavy moustache.

"Vice idealized as 'celebrity.'  Umph!  That's a modern definition?
Suppose I'm old-fashioned enough to look upon it as it is.  Come, you
can't really care for such rubbish, Trent.  It's an insult to common
sense, I think.  And look at that row of vapid idiots grinning from
ear to ear--boys with the _blasé_ faces of men, and limbs like
thread-paper.  Fine stuff for soldiers there!"

"That's a detachment of the Crutch and Toothpick Brigade," laughs
Trentermain; "also a new importation of society since we bade
farewell to Albion's shores.  British youth don't seem to have much
backbone, eh?"

They laugh and rise and go out, to the intense disgust of a bevy of
fair ones who have been directing Parthian glances at the two
magnificent-looking men in the stalls, and drawing comparisons
between them and the "Brigade" in no way complimentary to the latter.

Once free of the theatre, they hail a hansom and are driven to the
rooms of Valentine Vane, an old comrade of their own who has retired
from the service, and is cultivating artistic tastes with
praiseworthy assiduity.

But Valentine Vane, or V.V., as his friends call him, is in a state
of pleasant excitement.  He has been invited to a reception at the
house of one of the most famous leaders of the new school, and he
insists upon carrying the two officers off with him despite their
remonstrances.

"She bade me bring any friend I pleased," he says enthusiastically.
"Ah, when you see her!  Such grace, such languor, such divine
indolence!  Every attitude a poem; every look a revelation of subtle
meaning!  Ah!"

"Sounds serpentine, I think," says Carlisle, _sotto voce_.  "Gives
you the impression of a snake gliding about.  Can't say I appreciate
the prospect."

"Of course you are as yet Philistines," continues V.V., pouring some
scent over his handkerchief as he speaks, and gently waving the
delicate cambric to disperse the fragrance.  "Ah, you have much to
learn!"

"My dear fellow," says Carlisle good-humouredly, "do shut up that
nonsense, and talk rationally."

"Rational?" echoes Vane, in surprise.  "Am I not that?  What is there
irrational in finding delight in all that is beautiful, in wishing to
be surrounded by sweet sounds and fair objects, in striving to revive
the glories of the Hellenic age in worshipping Art as the glorious
and ennobling thing it is?"

"I am not going to say anything against art," answers Colonel
Carlisle; "but I don't think there is anything of the Greek type
about Englishmen, either physically or intellectually, leaving out of
the question the depressing influences of climate."

"Ah!" sighs Vane pityingly.  "It is all new and strange to you.
Æstheticism, as interpreted by modern hierophants, is, of course,
essentially different from the Hellenic school; but its aim and
object is the same--to beautify the common things of life, to ennoble
the soul, as well as please the eye and elevate the senses."

"Well, I am not sufficiently up in the subject to understand or argue
about it," laughed the Colonel.  "Perhaps after to-night----"

"Ah, yes!  Wait till you see _her_!" cries Vane enthusiastically.
"She who has converts by the hundred, whose intellect is as beautiful
as the body which is its temple; to whom not only the worship but the
perception of art is a natural and exquisite impulse; whose grace,
whose mind, whose movements----"

"Oh, for Heaven's sake spare me any more 'serpentine' descriptions!"
entreats Carlisle.  "I am quite ready to believe in this wonderful
high priestess of yours.  Is she anything like Ellen Terry?"

"Ellen Terry is sublime also," says Vane rebukingly.  "There's not
another actress on the stage could walk in those clinging draperies
of hers.  Is she not a poem?"

"She _acted_ one," says the Colonel dryly.  "I saw her in 'The Cup.'
I am not educated up to the appreciation of subtleties yet."

"I have met at least a dozen fair-haired girls who have all told me
they were considered 'so like Ellen Terry,'" puts in Trentermain.  "I
began to think she must be a 'priestess' also."

"Ah, there are a good many changes since I was in London last," says
the Colonel.  "But there, I see you are impatient to be off.
You--you don't mean to say you are going to wear _that_ flower, Vane?"

He points to a gardenia in his button-hole as he speaks.

"Yes; why not?" demands his friend in surprise.

"Oh!  I thought the sunflower or the lily was only admissible," says
Carlisle gravely.  "I was going to ask if it would be possible to
procure one each for Trent and myself before entering the Temple of
Art and æstheticism."

It is simply out of idle curiosity that Carlisle has accompanied Vane
and Trentermain.  He expects to be terribly bored; but when they
alight at the famous house in Kensington, and everywhere he sees the
delicate subdued hues, the softly-shaded lights, the
gracefully-arranged ferns and shrubs and hot-house blossoms, the
artistic yet suitable dresses of the attendants, who move about so
unobtrusively (there is not a man-servant anywhere), the strange hush
and quietude, broken by no loud voices or discordant laughter, he
begins to think the new school is not so bad after all.

"And now for the priestess," he says in a whisper to Trent, as they
follow their friend from the tea-room, which is simply a gem.  His
tall figure passes through the curtained doorway.  A light like
moonlight fills all the room into which he enters.  His head towers
above Vane's, and straight before him he sees a woman with a halo of
golden hair loose about her brow, with a soft, languid, serious
smile, with----

Their eyes meet.  After thirteen long years of absence and
separation, Cyril Carlisle finds himself once again in the presence
of the only woman he has ever really loved.

"Colonel Carlisle, Lady Etwynde Fitz-Herbert."

He bends over her hand as she gives it.  In that moment she is
calmer, more self-possessed than himself.

"I--I hope--I beg," he stammers confusedly.  "I mean, I had no idea
when Vane asked me to come here that I should find myself in _your_
house."

"You are very welcome," she says, and the low, tender music of her
voice thrills him with an exquisite pain.  "I--I saw your regiment
had returned.  You have been away a great many years."

"A great many," he answers, his eyes sweeping over the lovely face
and figure of the queenly woman, who is so like and yet so different
to the radiant, happy girl he had left.

"You--you are very little altered," she says presently, and the great
fan of peacock's feathers in her hand trembles as she meets his
glance.

"Am I?" he says bitterly.  "I should have thought the reverse; I feel
changed enough, Heaven knows."

She is silent.  Her heart is beating fast, the colour comes and goes
in her face.  She is thinking how glad she is she did not put on that
terra-cotta gown with its huge puffs and frills, but discarded it at
the last moment for this soft creamy robe of Indian silk, that seems
to float about her like a mist, and show all the lovely curves of her
perfect figure as she moves or stands.  Cyril Carlisle thinks her
more lovely than ever.  The old pain so long buried and fought
against comes back all too vividly.  He knows he has never forgotten,
never ceased to love this woman; but she--how calm, how changed she
is!  Again, as in the past, comes back the thought of all his love
for her had meant, of all they might have been but for his own folly,
his own sin.

"A man's passions are ever their own Nemesis," he thinks wearily, and
then her voice falls on his ear again.  She is introducing him to
some one.  A limp and lack-lustre "damosel," as she loves to be
called, attired in pale sage-green that makes him bilious to
contemplate; and he is fain to give this maiden his arm, and conduct
her through the rooms, and listen to her monotonous tattle of art
jargon, which seems to him the most idiotic compound of nonsense and
ignorance ever filtered through the lips of a woman--and he has heard
a good deal.

His thoughts will go back to this strange meeting.

She is not married, she is free still.  Was it faithfulness to him,
or----  He thrusts the thought aside contemptuously.  What folly it
seems!  What woman _could_ remember for thirteen years?  Besides, had
they not parted in anger?  Had she not cast him aside with contempt
and fierce scorn, and bitter words that had stabbed him to the heart?

He roams about the beautiful rooms.  He hears her name on every
tongue.  He knows that men of science and learning are here--men of
note in the highest circles of art and literature.  He is glad that
her tastes are so pure and elevated, glad that he does not find her a
mere woman of fashion, a frivolous nonentity.  Again and again he
finds himself watching that fair, serene face, that exquisite figure,
which is a living embodiment of grace that may well drive all women
desperate with envy.

How calm she is!  How passionless, how changed!  Men speak of her
beauty, the beauty that lends itself so perfectly to this fantastic
fashion of which all her guests seem devotees, and the words turn his
blood to fire.  Yet, after all, why should he mind?  She is nothing
to him--nothing.  He is beside her again.  She does not appear to
notice his presence, but she is well enough aware of it.  It lends
warmth and colour and animation to her face, it lights her great grey
eyes, and brings smiles to her lips.  His heart grows bitter within
him.  She must have long ago grown callous and forgotten.  Does she
really forget how passionately she loved him once!  Does she think of
him no more than if he were the veriest stranger in her crowded
rooms?  Has she ever wept, prayed, suffered for him?

God help us, men and women both, if we could not in some way mask our
faces and conceal our feelings!  Because the world sees no tears in
our eyes it does not follow they are never shed; because there are
smiles on our lips it is not a necessity that our hearts are without
suffering.  When the curtain is down, when the theatre is empty and
dark, then, perhaps, the real play begins; the play that no audience
sees, that is only acted out to our own breaking, beating hearts,
unsuspected and unknown to the world around!




CHAPTER XXI

The crowd has lessened; the rooms are thinning now.  A great actor
stands up to give a recitation.  He selects one of Browning's poems.
Lady Etwynde, having heard it often before, withdraws into one of the
smaller rooms, a dainty little place, with the exquisite colouring
and artistic finish of a cameo, and with only that sort of moonlight
haze shed about it that she loves so much better than the garish
brilliancy of gas, or candles.

To this retreat saunters also the figure, on whose tall magnificent
proportions even the eyes of the feminine æsthetes have rested with
an admiration contrary to all the tenets of their school.

He seats himself beside Lady Etwynde.

"What a charming retreat," he says softly.  "Do you know I wish you
would give me a little information about this 'æstheticism,' of which
you seem a high priestess?  I confess I feel quite bewildered."

She smiles.  She does not look up.

"Yes, I suppose it is new to you," she answers.  "The worst of it is
that, like all new doctrines, it is being ruined by exaggeration.
Genuine æstheticism is, as of course you know, the science of beauty,
and its true perception and pursuit.  Our school has its canons, its
doctrines, its schemes and projects, on which oceans of ridicule have
been poured and yet left it unharmed.  It has done much good; it has
taught the poetry of colour and arrangement to a class whose dress
and abodes were simply appalling to people of taste.  If you have
ever suffered from the gilded abominations of a millionaire's
drawing-room----"

Colonel Carlisle moves a little impatiently.

"But is this craze to regulate our lives, to be the great 'all' of
our existence?  Are men and women to go about long-haired,
straight-gowned, tousled; jabbering 'intense' nonsense and gushing
over blue china and sunflowers; and is such an existence considered
elevating, manly, or useful?  To me it seems as if I were looking on
at a pantomime."

"You are not educated yet," says Lady Etwynde, with a demure smile.
"Everything new has, of course, its opponents.  You have read Plato?"

"When I was at school," answers the Colonel.

"Ah!" sighs Lady Etwynde.  "And you have forgotten all he says about
artistic excellence and beauty; the relations of all physical and
moral and intellectual life to what is most perfect and intelligent;
how life should be filled with grace and dignity, the mind cultured
to its utmost capability, the body beautified by vital activity and
ennobled by a healthy and carefully taught appreciation of all that
is conducive to physical and mental perfection."

"Has it taken you thirteen years to learn all this?" asks Colonel
Carlisle softly, as he leans forward and looks into her eyes in the
silver haze of the lamplight.

She starts a little.

"You think I am so--changed?" she says, in her natural voice, and
discarding æsthetic languor.

"I think you are ten thousand times more beautiful, more captivating,
than when I knew you first.  But--changed?  Well, yes.  Is your life
devoted only to the study of the Beautiful now?"

She colours softly.

"I think you do not quite understand," she says.  "When a woman's
life is empty, something she must do to fill up the void.  And I do
not think this pursuit is so very foolish as you seem to suppose."

"Only that John Bull has not much of the Hellenic type about him,"
says the Colonel, _sotto voce_.

"You see," she goes on, with sweet gravity, "moral beauty and
physical beauty have each their worshippers.  We would weld the two
together, and so glorify art, literature, mind, physique--all that is
about and around our daily lives.  But, as I said before, like all
new creeds, it is spoiled by the over-zealous, exaggerated by the
foolish, ridiculed by the surface judges.  It is not the cultivation
of one thing only, but the cultivation of all that real æsthetics
would teach; leading, subduing, elevating the spiritual and poetic
capacity of our nature, and subordinating the crude and material."

"That sounds more sensible," says Colonel Carlisle.  "But when I
heard in your rooms of symphonies of colour, and 'tones' of harmony,
and worship of some special make of china, and 'living up' to
peacocks' fans and feathers, I confess I thought the people were all
lunatics, to say the least of it, and marvelled how you could have
shared in such a lamentable creed and become a priestess of 'High
Art,' as interpreted by terra-cotta gowns, sage-green furniture, and
old china which seems to convert modern drawing-rooms into a memory
of kitchen dressers.  Life may be full of emotions and 'thrills,' as
I heard a long-haired youth explaining in a dying voice, but such
life as this seemed to me, I must confess, a series of absurdities
such as no sensible mind could entertain."

"Those are the zealots and the exaggerators," smiles Lady Etwynde
amusedly.  "They have spoilt much by carrying into extremes what is
only tolerable in moderation; by dragging in without warning what
really requires delicate and gradual preparation."

"I am glad that you are only moderate then," says her companion.
"Some one once said that there was a sphinx in our souls who was
perpetually asking us riddles.  I confess I thought there was one in
mine when I met you to-night under such changed auspices."

"And what was the riddle?" asks Lady Etwynde.

He bends a little closer.  "The _reason_, of course!  You told me a
few moments ago that when a woman's life was empty she must do
something to fill up the void.  Was yours so empty?"

It is a bold question; he wonders he has dared ask it.  She turns
pale with--anger.  Of course it is anger, and her eyes are flashing
under their long lashes, and words won't come because her heart is
hot and indignant.  So he interprets her silence and murmurs
apologetically: "Forgive me; I had no right to make such a remark;
only, I have been such a miserable man since you sent me from your
side, that it seemed in some way to console me that you had not been
quite--happy, either."

"I suppose no one is that," she says, with a suspicious tremor in her
voice.  "Something, or some one, is sure to spoil our lives for us."

He draws back.  The shaft has hit home.  He remembers only too well
who has spoilt the life of this woman beside him.

"Society is too artificial to content me," she goes on rapidly.  "I
want something more than amusement.  I like to think.  I like
rational conversation.  I like art, little as I can study or
understand its great teachings.  I like all that elevates the mind,
and is beautiful to the senses; so I plunged headlong into the new
school, and it has interested and occupied me.  Do not suppose I
consider it perfect by any means; but it has done much good--it will
do more.  If you were interested in such things you might remember
the glaring colours, the brilliant hues that made one's eyes ache not
so very long ago.  Look what lovely shades and tints we have now.
Women required to be educated to some sense of colour and fitness.
However plain or insignificant we may be, we may at least make our
defects less oppressive by taste and culture."

"There I quite agree with you," says Colonel Carlisle, wondering a
little how she manages always to evade personal topics and glide back
to the keynote of their conversation.  "But you lack neither taste
nor culture; your words apply to quite a different class of persons.
And if æsthetics teach taste and appreciation of all that is
beautiful and cultured, why, in Heaven's name, do these people make
such guys of themselves?"

"I have told you twice already that every creed has its exaggerators."

"This creed seems to have more than its share then," he says
amusedly.  "Your rooms are perfection, I allow--your toilette is like
a Greek poet's dream; but I confess I see no other like it."

"You are very kind to say so," she murmurs, with an inward
congratulation that fate had saved her from the terra-cotta gown
which, in a fit of "exaggeration," she had ordered.  "But I wanted to
ask you about yourself.  Our conversation seems very one-sided.  Have
you returned to England for good?"

"I don't know," he says, somewhat embarrassed.  "It will depend on
one or two things.  I don't know if I am quite fit for civilized life
again.  It seems to want the air, the freedom, the unconventionally,
the long nights spent under no roof but heaven's, the excitement of
sport that may mean death at any moment, the thrill of danger, the
hazard of battle--thirteen years of such a life make one rather
impatient of your effeminate doctrines, don't you think?"

"Yes," she says, with a little soft thrill at her heart at the ring
of the manly voice, at the look in the dark, fearless eyes; "I
suppose it does.  But there is no need for you to follow the creed.
I was only explaining."

"And I don't seem to have heard half enough about it," he answers
seriously.  "What, are you going?"

"I must," she says, rising from her seat.  "The recitation is over.
What a pity you did not listen.  Don't you like Browning?"

"I might if I could understand him," says the Colonel, rising also
and looking somewhat disturbed at the interruption to their
conversation.  "I always sympathize with that unfortunate man in 'The
Golden Butterfly'; do you remember?  The American who sits up all
night to study Browning's works because he expects him to dinner."

Lady Etwynde laughs.

"Yes, poor fellow, and he set himself such an easy task.  He meant to
read through the _whole_ collection in the course of one evening.
Though Americans pride themselves on doing 'big things,' I fancy that
was rather beyond him.  By the way, do you like Americans?  I will
introduce you to a charming girl if you do, and she is not one of the
æsthetic school, so you needn't be alarmed that she will afflict you
with 'art jargon.'"

"I shall be very happy," murmured the Colonel, "only, really----"

"Oh, no excuses," says Lady Etwynde.  "There she is, that pretty girl
opposite.  You mustn't make love to her, though, for she is engaged.
Her _fiancé_ is not here to-night.  That is her aunt beside her; she
is quite a character in her way."

Colonel Carlisle feels no ambition to be introduced either to the
"beauty" or the character, but he does not like to say so, and he is
soon bowing before the radiant little figure of "Dresden China."  She
looks at him with undisguised admiration.  The "big man" has
attracted the attention of most feminine eyes to-night--all the more
perhaps because he looks so indifferent, so bored, so unadmiring.

Pretty and bewitching as "Dresden China" is, the Colonel seems to
feel no inclination to pay her compliments.  He stands and listens to
her chatter with the sort of amused indulgence he would bestow on any
pretty girl.  He thinks what a pity the American twang is so strong,
and how vulgar is the aunt, and marvels what the _fiancé_ is like,
and why he is not now beside his lady-love.  And all the time he
cannot keep his restless glance from following the floating movements
of that graceful figure in her creamy draperies of Indian silk.  His
heart echoes the poet's words unconsciously:

  There is none like her--none!


"What would I not give to know if she remembers still?" he says to
himself.  "But I am a fool to imagine it possible.  Why should she?
and how could she forgive the old sin now any more than in her young,
passionate, romantic girlhood?  And yet--oh, my darling, if life has
taught you wisdom, you must surely know that love has nothing to do
with the soulless follies in which men find beguilement, nor is there
one thing on earth they loathe so utterly as an unworthy passion,
whose pursuit has been base, whose conquest wearied almost as soon as
achieved, whose every memory is a sting that shames them, and from
which their better nature recoils even in thought, once the evil
glamour is over."

But he did not know--how should he?--that it is just of that evil
glamour a woman's heart is jealous.

When Lady Etwynde had loved him, she had been almost a child--young,
fresh, innocent, pure.  She had abandoned herself to that love
without thought or analysis.  She had worshipped him as the noblest,
truest of God's creatures; she had thought that to him she was all in
all.  No cloud had crossed the sky, no sound disturbed the illusion;
in its innocence and depth and peace, her love had been in its way as
perfect as it was beautiful; and then suddenly, without warning or
preparation of any sort, she had learnt that she was deceived.

Had she known more of the world, had she been in any way less
innocent of mind and thought, she would have known better than to
expect so much as she had expected.  She would have learnt the lesson
all women have to learn, that their love must accept the evil of a
man's past as well as the good of his future, giving a simple
fidelity that asks no questions, and takes just what--remains.

But she had not known.  Her dreams had been rudely broken; her faith
as rudely shaken.  Angered, outraged, shamed, she had been stung to
the fierceness of jealous anger, and her love had looked debased in
her sight as in his own, because of the falsehoods told and credited.

How could she judge of the emptiness and weariness of a dead passion
that he had only longed to forget, that he dared not breathe to her
pure young ears?  How should she reck of the soulless bondage from
which he thought himself free?  She had been so proud, that his
excuses looked paltry to himself--an amorous infidelity that this
great, pure, trusting love had shamed and shown as the debasing,
selfish thing it was.

And she would hear nothing--nothing; and in his heart he could not
blame her.

"If she had loved me less she would have forgiven," he had said to
himself.

"The innocence of youth is cruel, because its ideals are so lofty,
its exactions so great.  She thought me a hero, and now I look only a
beast!"

And he had left her.  She would never forgive, he felt sure; and all
his pleas and excuses only humiliated him, and never touched her.
Desperate, maddened, hating himself and his old folly, whose burden
he could never in life shake off, so he had passed from her presence
and her knowledge for thirteen long years.  And now he stood before
her again and thought of the past.


"Do tell, Colonel," says the shrill voice of the Dresden China figure
beside him.  "Did you ever shoot a tiger out there in India, and is
it really so hot, and do the elephants come out at night and knock
all the houses down, and is there nothing but curry and rice to eat,
and are the ladies all yellow, and have you brought any 'punkahs' or
tigers' claws home with you, and did you know Captain Dasher of the
40th?  He went out to Burmah last year."

Colonel Carlisle rouses himself, and looks at her bewildered.  He
does not know how to begin answering her questions.  Fortunately he
is saved the trouble.

"Why, aunt, there's Keith!" she exclaims suddenly.  "He's come after
all.  Excuse me, Colonel; that's the young man I'm going to marry.
Will you tell him I'm sitting here, and he's to come right along at
once?"

Colonel Carlisle bows, and retreats delighted.




CHAPTER XXII

  To feel the arms of my true love
  Round me once again!


No one has been more astonished at the news of Keith Athelstone's
engagement than Lady Etwynde.  It comes to her in a letter from
Lauraine--a cold and strangely written letter, yet one which has
caused the writer terrible pangs.

When they left Baden they had gone to Falcon's Chase, and entertained
a large house party there.  After Christmas Lauraine was coming to
London.  She was not strong, and the cold, bleak air of the north
tried her severely.  All this Lady Etwynde learnt by letters--letters
that seemed curt and constrained--that in no way revealed anything of
that inner life, those secret springs of feelings which she had
learned to read and gauge in the confidences of that past summer.

She is sitting alone in her room that is like a cameo in the soft
November dusk of the closing day.  It is some three days since her
reception and the meeting with Colonel Carlisle.  She is thinking she
will write and tell Lauraine about it, and then again she thinks she
had better not.  In this state of indecision she is disturbed by the
entrance of one of the æsthetically-clad damsels of her household.

"Do you receive, my lady?" she asks, presenting her with a card.

Lady Etwynde glances at it, then blushes hotly.

"Yes," she says, turning away so that her tell-tale face may not be
noticed.  She feels half ashamed, half glad.  The name on the card is
"Colonel Carlisle."

She is dressed to-day in olive-green velvet, with touches of old
yellow lace about the throat and wrists; the golden hair is coiled
loosely about her beautifully shaped head, and waves in softly
tangled curls and ripples above her brow.  She looks very lovely, and
her visitor's eyes tell her so as he bows over her slender white
hand, and murmurs conventional greeting.

"I am glad to find you at home," he says.

"It is not my day," she answers, smiling up at the tall figure.  "But
perhaps you won't object to that.  You would have found a crowd here
had it been."

"An æsthetic crowd, of course?"

"Chiefly; but I have other society as well."

"And do you live here quite alone?" he asks curiously.

"Do you mean without a sheep-dog?  Oh, yes.  Although I don't go in
for advanced thought, I fail to see why an unmarried woman can't live
by herself instead of being bored with a companion."

"And don't you find it lonely?"

"I never have time," she answers tranquilly.  "My days are always
fully occupied."

"And you are quite happy and--content?"

"As much as any one can be, I suppose," she says, a faint colour
coming into the proud, delicate face.  "I think if one has occupation
and interest one can never be quite unhappy."

"And--affection?" he questions softly.

"Oh, that, of course, one does not expect," she says hurriedly.  "I
think a placid life is, after all, the best.  It is like monotones in
colour--safe, restful, even it somewhat dull."

"It sounds rather cheerless," says Colonel Carlisle gravely.  "Art
cannot satisfy our emotional faculties, or fill our hearts as human
love and sympathy can."

"Tennyson says, 'The feelings are dangerous guides,'" she answers
bitterly; "and emotion is apt to make us capricious.  As to sympathy,
well, I don't think I have outlived that----"

"But love, you have?" he interrupts softly.

Her eyes meet his in startled confusion.  All their ordinary calm is
swept away.

"Have you any right to ask such a question?" she says coldly.

His face changes.  A storm of feeling sweeps over his soul, and for a
moment chains back the impetuous words he fain would utter.

"No; I have not--unless a long, faithful memory of--you gives me any
right."

His voice is very low, his face pale, despite the bronzing of Indian
suns.  His eyes rest on her with a great sadness and a great longing
in their depths.  She is so much to him--this woman sitting there,
with the dying daylight on her rich-hued dress, and the fire-gleams
playing over the drooped golden head.  So much, and he----  Oh, fool
that he has been to lose her!

"I thought men's memories were never faithful," she murmurs, in
answer to his last words.

"I know you judge them very harshly," he answers coldly.  "I only
trust that the effeminate, long-haired apostles of your new school
may prove more virtuous, if less manly, than the old type."

She half smiles.

"Physical strength is always impatient of anything weak or imperfect.
A man like yourself dwarfs most of our modern youth into
insignificance.  But there are noble souls sometimes in the feeblest
bodies, just as----"

"Thank you," he says, as she hesitates; "I can quite follow your
meaning, and accept it."

She flushes hotly.  "Pray do not misunderstand me," she says
hurriedly.  "Do not suppose----"

"Oh, no," he answers, gazing back into her uplifted eyes with the
ardour of past years kindling in his own.  "I don't think I ever did
_that_.  It was you who misunderstood _me_."

"I thought--I hoped you might have forgotten," she says, in confusion.

"It is strange that I have not," he answers.  "Thirteen years of such
a life as mine ought to have knocked sentiment pretty well out of
one.  But somehow it is not easy to forget what pains one most.  Joys
may be soon crowded out of mind and memory; sorrows cling to us
despite ourselves."

She is silent.  His words fill her with a strange trouble.  The past
comes back again, and she sees her girlhood's hero--a hero no longer,
but a man, erring, sinful, faulty, as all men and women are and will
be in this troubled world.  And yet now she feels she understands him
better than she did in those days when she had idealized him into
something grander, nobler, greater than it lay in any man's power to
be.

"When I left you," he resumes presently, gaining courage to speak on
in the silence of the gathering dusk, "I left all the best part of my
life.  You were very hard on me, but I will not say that I did not
deserve it.  Still, your conduct did not drive me desperate, did not
make me reckless, but rather filled me with shame and sorrow to think
of how far I had fallen short of your worth, your love----"

"Oh hush," she interrupts.  "Do you think I am so poor and
contemptible that I can listen to your words and not feel the sting
of my own vanity, my childish ignorance, and stubborn pride?  Why, I
have never thought of my words that day without bitter shame; and
you--you were too generous even to reproach me."

"I had no right to do that," he says, very gently.  "I acted for the
best, as I thought; I wished to spare you.  You misunderstood me;
that was all."

"And all these years you have--remembered me?" she says, faintly,
shyly, not daring to lift her eyes to the grave, noble face.

"Yes," he says simply.  "There is nothing so wonderful in that.  You
were the real love of my life, though you would not believe it."

Her heart throbs quickly; the colour comes and goes in her face.  She
is silent for very joy, for very shame.  She feels so unworthy of
this great, true, steadfast love, that she so scorned once, that she
had flung back at his feet in the bygone years because another had
shared, or seemed to share it, before herself.

"You are not offended, I hope?" he says presently.  He cannot see the
tears that shine on her lashes; he only knows she is very quiet and
calm, and fears that his words were too bold.

"No.  Why should I be?" she says tremulously.

"You did not believe in me then," he goes on.  "Not that I blame you,
or indeed have ever blamed you.  When a man loves a woman as I loved
you, he loves her with not only admiration for her beauty, but
reverence for the richer possibilities of the nature into which he
has gained an insight.  I knew you were proud, and pure, and true,
and I knew that in all my life I should think of no other woman as I
had thought of you.  I was right, you see."

Again she was silent.  Her heart beats so fast, its quick throbs
almost frighten her, what does he mean!  Can it be----

His voice breaks across the tumult of her thoughts.

"You said once you would never forgive me," he says softly.  "I
should not like you to know how those words troubled me: how again
and again they would ring in my ears in some scene of danger, at some
moment when Death and I have nearly shaken hands.  At such times it
seemed to me impossible that I would ever again be in your presence,
or voluntarily seek it.  Yet, strange to say, I have done both.  Fate
led me to you when I knew nothing of where I was going, and I find
myself wondering if Time has softened your memory of the wrong I did
you once, if ever you could find it in your heart to say the words I
prayed for then, 'I forgive.'"

The tears spring to her eyes.  The old remembered music of his voice
seems to thrill her with joy and pain.

"Do you think me so hard, so cold?" she falters.  "Long, long ago, I
have forgiven!"

"And you knew I was--free?"

The warm colour sweeps over her face.  Her eyes are hidden from his
eager gaze.

"Yes," she says softly.

"And the past, is it all over?" he says, very low, as he leaves his
chair and bends towards her.  "Do you still think I willingly
deceived you?"

"It would have been kinder, wiser, had you told me the truth at
first," she says somewhat faintly.

In the darkness of that shadowy room, with the sense of his presence,
with the rich music of his voice thrilling her heart with the
long-vanished gladness of other days, she feels strangely,
unutterably happy.  It makes her almost afraid.

"One thing more," he says, and he kneels at her feet and draws her
hands within his own.  "Have art and the world and the silence of
long years driven me out of your heart, for neither danger nor
absence have driven you out of mine?"

"I told you I had not forgotten," she says, trembling greatly and
growing very pale beneath this strange tumult of feeling that is so
full of gladness and yet of fear.

"Forgotten--but that is not all.  Do you remember the hard things you
said to me when we parted?  I kept back the error of my life, not
because I wished to deceive you, but because I feared the truth would
hurt you, and I dreaded to wound your purity and belief.  Heaven
knows I had suffered then, and have suffered since, enough to atone
for a far greater mistake!  Were I to come to you now with love as
great and memory as faithful, would you, knowing what is in the past,
be gentler with my folly?  Could you--love--me still?"

For all answer she draws her hands from his clasp, and lays them
softly round his neck, and her head sinks on his breast.  That touch,
that caress, are a new and purer baptism of the love that has borne
and suffered so much in the years that are dead--dead as their own
pain, and laid at rest for ever now, in a grave that many tears have
watered.



CHAPTER XXIII

Tout vient à point à qui sait attendre.


"My darling Lauraine," writes Lady Etwynde, sitting at the desk in
her pretty morning room, "I am so happy--so happy, I don't know how
to find words to tell you all about it.  _He_ has come back.  Now you
can guess the rest, can you not?  For thirteen years my darling has
been true; thirteen years during which I have made no sign, given no
token of relenting.  But it is all over and forgotten now.  Once more
I seem to wake and live.  The old, cheerless, weary years that I have
dreamt away, have lost their pain, are only full now of a soft regret
that my folly delayed my happiness; for oh! how short life seems when
one is glad, and the possibilities of the future seem limitless.  My
poor disciples are in despair, of course.  I am bound to neglect
them, for Cyril is a more _exigeant_ lover now than in those days of
old.  He says too much time has been wasted, and I cannot find it in
my heart to deny it.  We shall be married in February, so I shall
hope to have your presence.  I wish you would come up soon.  I am
longing to see you, and your letters are so unsatisfactory.  You told
me Sir Francis was away.  Will you come and stay with me for a few
weeks?  I should be more than delighted to have you, and I am sure
the change would do you good.  It seems a long time to wait till
Christmas to see you; and we might then go down to Northumberland
together.  Do make up your mind and say 'Yes.'  You would if you knew
what pleasure it would give me."


This letter finds Lauraine in the lonely splendour of Falcon's Chase.
She reads it and a little pang of bitterness shoots through her
heart.  But gradually it subsides, and gives way to softer emotions.

"So Etwynde's pride had to give way at last," she says to herself,
folding up the letter, and half inclined to accept its invitation.
"Ah, how great a lord is love!"

Lauraine has been almost glad of the entire peace and quiet of the
Chase since her guests have left it.  There had been nothing but
noise and excitement in it then.  The Lady Jean had come thither
radiant in novelties from Worth, and in highest spirits at the
success of some new and gigantic speculation of "Jo's," which
promised her unlimited extravagances for the season.  She had been
the life and soul of the party, had organized endless amusements
indoors and out, and had, in fact, made herself useful to Lauraine,
enchanting to Sir Francis, and popular with every one in the house.
That infatuation of her husband's was still unsuspected by Lauraine.
She neither noticed his devotion nor heard the hundred-and-one
comments upon it that were uttered often enough, even in her
presence.  They were old friends--had been friends so long, it never
occurred to her that there was anything more between them.

She was not acquainted with the numerous changes that society can
ring out of the little simple air it calls "Platonics."  She had felt
grateful to Lady Jean for taking so much trouble off her own hands,
for the energy and invention which had organized and carried out so
much that was entertaining.  It never occurred to her that her
husband might be drawing comparisons between her and his friend, and
those comparisons infinitely to the advantage of the latter.  In
accordance with her resolution, she had set herself to work to please
and study him in every way, but now he no longer cared for either.
He rather seemed to avoid her as much as possible, and her very
gentleness and patience served to irritate him.

Her mother had been there with the rest of their guests, and her eyes
had noticed with much disquietude what Lauraine never even seemed to
see.  It made her seriously uneasy, and in a measure irritated her
against her daughter's stupidity.  "She has lost him by her own
silliness, of course," she would say to herself.  "Just as if a man
wouldn't get bored with nothing but cold looks and dowdiness, and all
the fads and fangles that Lauraine has occupied herself with lately."

Which was Mrs. Douglas' method of explaining Lauraine's grief for her
child's death, and her friendship with Lady Etwynde.

It had been an intense relief to Lauraine when her guests had all
departed and she was once more alone.

She had tried hard to interest herself in things that used to please
him, to occupy her mind and thoughts; but the efforts seemed to grow
more and more wearisome.  The mind and body was at variance.

As now she sits there with Lady Etwynde's letter in her hand, she
thinks it will be better after all to go up to town and leave this
solitude, for which she had once yearned; and when she sees in her
mirror how pale and thin she has grown she begins to think the place
cannot agree with her, as every one says.  Of course it is only--the
place.  She will not, dare not, allow that there is anything
else--that the mind is preying on itself, and trying to outlive
thought and banish memory, and that the struggle is too hard a one.
No; that old folly is over, done with, buried, so she tells herself.
Of Keith she has heard no word since they met in Baden.  He may be
married now, for aught she knows, and yet somehow she feels he is
not--that.

"Yes, I will go," she says, at last.  "The solitude and dreariness
are oppressing me, and Etwynde's happiness will rouse me."

And she dashes off an immediate acceptance of the invitation, and the
next day bids her maid pack her trunks, and starts for London.

Lady Etwynde is overjoyed to see her, but shocked at the change in
her looks.  Yet she dares not breathe too much sympathy, or touch on
the old sorrow.  "Of what use?" she asks herself, "of what use now?"

Colonel Carlisle and Lauraine are mutually delighted with each other.
She cannot but admire the handsome physique, the courtly, genial
manners, the cultivated intelligence of this hero of her friend's;
and they are so perfectly content and happy with each other, that
even the most cynical disbelievers in love might acknowledge
themselves converts regarding these two.

Lauraine makes a charming "propriety."  She is engrossed in a book,
or inventive of an errand, or just going into the other room to write
a letter or try over a song, or, in fact, furnished with any amount
of excuses that seem perfectly natural and innocent enough to leave
the lovers to themselves.

"There will be one happy marriage among my acquaintances," she thinks
to herself, as she sees them so radiant, so engrossed.  "And, indeed,
they deserve it.  Fancy, thirteen years' constancy, and in our age,
too!  It seems like a veritable romance!"

One evening they go to the theatre; the piece is Robertson's comedy,
"Caste," and as Lauraine takes her seat and glances round the
well-filled house she sees in the box opposite the well-known figures
of Mrs. Bradshaw Woollffe, and her niece, and Keith Athelstone.  Of
course, they see her directly, and exchange bows, Keith keeps at the
back of the box, and behind the radiant little figure of his
_fiancée_.

Lady Etwynde is deeply annoyed at the _contretemps_.  As for
Lauraine, all the pleasure of the evening is spoilt for her.

After the second act she sees Keith leave the box.  A few moments
afterwards he appears in their own.

"I am the bearer of a message from Mrs. Woollffe," he says to Lady
Etwynde, after greetings have been exchanged.  "She says I am to
insist on your all coming to supper with her.  She has secured one or
two professional and literary celebrities, and it will be very
charming.  She won't take no.  There, I have delivered my message
verbatim."

He speaks hurriedly, and a little nervously.  Colonel Carlisle looks
at his "ladye love," and declares he is quite ready to accept if she
is.  Lady Etwynde, seeing how calm and indifferent Lauraine appears,
is at a loss what to say.

"We, I mean Lady Vavasour and I, were----" she stammers.  Lauraine
looks quickly up--

"I should be delighted to meet such charming society," she says.  "I
am quite ready to waive our previous engagement if you are, Etwynde."

So there remains nothing but to accept, and Keith retires to inform
Mrs. Woollffe of the success of his mission.

"You are sure you do not mind?" asks Lady Etwynde kindly, as she
bends forward to her friend, when they are alone.

"Not in the least--why should I?" answers Lauraine.  "And I always
like Mrs. Woollffe.  I should be sorry to offend her, and we have no
excuse to offer."

"And you never tell 'white lies,'" smiles Lady Etwynde.  "Isn't she
wonderful, Cyril?"

"Lady Vavasour is indeed an example to most of her sex," answers the
Colonel.  "I thought they were all addicted to that harmless little
practice.  But I am glad you have decided upon going to Mrs.
Woollffe's.  I am delighted with her niece, although I have a
remembrance of being 'questioned' within an inch of my life five
minutes after my first introduction to them."

"Do you remember that evening?" asks Lady Etwynde softly.

"Do I not?" his eyes answer for him, as under cover of the dim light
he touches her hand.

She looks up and meets his glance, and smiles softly back with
perfect understanding.

Ah, no shadow of doubt or wrong will ever come between herself and
him again.  Lauraine notes that fond glance, that swift
comprehension, and her heart grows sick and cold as she thinks of the
emptiness of her own life.  A woman never feels the want of love so
much as when she sees another in possession of what she has lost.

If beauty, wit, and intelligence can make a supper party brilliant,
Mrs. Bradshaw Woollffe should have had no reason to complain.  None
of the "celebrities" disappoint.  "Dresden China" is a host in
herself, Colonel Carlisle is delightful, Lady Etwynde radiant.  The
only silent members of the party are Keith Athelstone and Lauraine.

A strange constraint is upon them both.  As from time to time their
eyes meet, each notes with a heavy heart the change wrought in these
few months.  On Keith it is even more apparent.  His face is as pale
as if the hot young blood had been frozen in its currents, and no
longer could warm and colour that passionless exterior.  The half
petulant, wayward manner which had been charming in its very
youthfulness and caprice, was now grave and chill, and had lost all
its brightness and vivacity.

"He is not happy," thinks Lauraine sadly, and she glances at the
pretty little sparkling creature opposite, who is chattering and
laughing as if she had not a care in the world, and had certainly
escaped the contamination of her lover's gravity.

"Do you make a long stay in London?" asks Keith, in a low voice, when
the clatter of tongues and laughter is at its height.

Lauraine looks suddenly up, and meets the blue eyes that seem to have
lost all their fire and eagerness now.  "No; only two or three weeks.
Lady Etwynde comes back with me to Falcon's Chase for Christmas."

"I--I have something to ask you," he says, almost humbly.  "I have
longed to see you often--just for one half-hour--to say this.  You
know I have grown so accustomed to take counsel with you that the old
habit clings to me still.  May I call on you to-morrow?  May I see
you alone?  Do not look so alarmed; you need not fancy I have
forgotten--Erlsbach."

"I shall be very glad to see you if you want my advice," says
Lauraine, very coldly.  "But I can scarcely imagine you do.  Surely,
in all the momentous arrangements before you, Miss Jefferson is the
person you should consult."

"Yes," he answers quietly, "and her taste and mine so invariably
clash that I find the best thing to do is to yield her undisputed
choice.  Can you imagine me yielding the palm of all things?  Beaten
into subjection.  A good beginning, is it not?"

Lauraine looks at him, inexpressibly pained by his words and tone.
"She is very charming, and I daresay will make an admirable wife,"
she says uneasily.  "I am sure every one admires your choice!"

"Isn't that rather a disadvantage nowadays?" says Keith bitterly.
'The husband of the pretty Mrs. So-and-so' is not a very dignified
appellation.  You see scores of men running after your wife, and if
you object are called a jealous fool, or 'bad style' or something of
that sort.  We certainly live in a delightful age for--women."

"I don't think you ought to affect that cynical style of talking,"
says Lauraine gravely.  "It doesn't sit naturally on your years, and
it is too much like the caught-up cant of society.  Women are no
worse now than they have always been, I suppose, nor men either."

"It is like old times to have you 'lecturing' me," says Keith, with a
sudden smile--the first she has seen on his lips to-night.

Lauraine colours and remembers.  "Well, you deserve a lecture for
speaking so.  I hate to hear men, especially young men, abusing
women!  As if the worst of us were not, after all, better than most
of you.  And what do you know, _really_ know, of women?  At your age
a man is hardly conscious of what he wants except amusement and
excitement; and the woman who gives him these, be her moral nature
ever so vile, is the woman from whom he takes his opinions of the
whole sex.  '_Toujours femme varie_' has a wide meaning.  To deduce
from _one_ an opinion of all, is the greatest folly a man can commit."

"What a tirade!" says Keith amusedly.  "I know well enough your sex
are enigmas.  It is hard to make out what you really are.  And I am
quite sure that I shall never meet another woman like you; but I hope
you don't mean to say that I have formed my opinion from a 'bad'
specimen."

"I was speaking of men in general," says Lauraine, somewhat
hurriedly.  "The fashion of talking slightingly of women is a most
pernicious one.  Certainly we are to blame, or our age, for such a
fashion.  Women have too little dignity nowadays; but they suffer for
it, by losing their own prestige in the sight of men."

"You would never lose your self-respect," says Keith, in a low voice.

"I should be the most miserable woman alive if I did," she answers
composedly; but her cheeks burn, and in her heart she says: "I have
lost it--long ago!"

"Ah," says Keith bitterly, "it is well to be you.  Heaven help you if
you had been cast in a weaker mould, like those you condemn; if you
had to look back on life as only a _coup manque_."

A burst of riotous laughter drowns his words.  The whole table is
convulsed over some _risqué_ American story told with inimitable
point and humour by the lovely rosy lips of "Dresden China."


As they part that night Keith whispers in Lauraine's ear: "To-morrow,
twelve, I will call."




CHAPTER XXIV

Lauraine wakes up next morning with a vague consciousness that she
has done something wrong, something which she regrets.  Why should
she have granted this interview to Keith Athelstone?  Why should he
have asked for it?

And yet, amidst all her disquietude, she smiles bitterly as she
thinks how far away, how "over and done with," is that old time
between them.  She is married, he about to be married.  There can be
nothing to fear now.

During breakfast she is silent and preoccupied.  She wonders what
excuse she can make to Lady Etwynde for breaking a shopping
engagement; but, as if fate played into her hands, Lady Etwynde tells
her that Colonel Carlisle is coming to drive her to Bond Street that
morning to choose some diamonds he has seen, and so the dressmakers
must be put off.  Lauraine seizes the chance delightedly, and says
she will stay at home and have a quiet morning for once, and at
half-past eleven Lady Etwynde drives off in her _fiancé's_ mail
phaeton, and Lauraine finds herself alone.

Her uneasiness increases.  She can settle to nothing.  A feverish
colour burns in her cheeks, her eyes are brilliant.  Every step in
the street, every ring at the bell, startles and unnerves her.  Again
and again she wishes she had not promised to see Keith.  Again and
again does she find herself hoping, praying he may not come after all.

Twelve strikes.  She is sitting in the "cameo" room--her own special
favourite--her eyes watch the hands of the clock with an absorbed
fascination.

One minute past, two, three, four, five.  He will not come.  Ten
minutes past.  Now she is quite sure he will not.  Is she relieved,
or sorry?  Eleven minutes past.

He is here.  "I am sorry to be late.  I was detained," he says,
greeting her nervously.  "I should have liked to keep up my old
character for punctuality."

She gives him her hand.  Now that he _has_ come she feels calm and
composed once more, and all her gentle dignity of manner returns.
"And what is the momentous business on which I am to give my
opinion?" she asks, as he takes the low seat opposite her own and
looks steadily at her.

For an instant he is silent.  Then he shakes back the soft hair from
his brow with the impatient gesture that she well remembers.

"It is only--this," he says.  "If I go through with this marriage it
will drive me mad!"

Startled, surprised out of all her self-control, Lauraine looks at
him in dread and horror.

"Why do you come to me and tell me this?" she says piteously.  "Of
what use is it?"

"None, I suppose.  I only wanted to say I took your advice; that with
might and main I set myself to work to care for Nan.  I might as well
have saved myself the trouble.  There are times when a devil within
me rises and tempts me to kill her: when I hate myself for deceiving
her, and her for being deceived; when----  But why pain your ears
with such folly?  This thing is too hard for me.  I cannot do it,
Lorry--I _cannot_."

"Oh, Keith!"  It is such a sorrowful little cry.  It is just as when
in their childish days some deed or freak of his had grieved his
little playmate's gentle heart.  It thrills through him with a pain
that is intolerable.

"For God's sake, don't speak like that--don't pity me!" he cries
wildly.  "It is more than I can bear.  Oh, Lorry, don't think I have
come here to-day to distress you with the old sorrow.  It is not
that, indeed.  I only wanted to say that I have brought double
dishonour on my head by trying to do what you seemed to think would
cure me; to ask you if you would have me go through with this
horrible farce--for, as there is a Heaven above us, I would sooner
die the worst death you could name, than speak such a lie in face of
God and man as I should speak did I promise to be a husband to--Nan."
His voice is low and husky, and the words come out with fierce,
unstudied eloquence.

Lauraine's heart aches as she listens, as she looks.  She is utterly
at a loss what to say.

"I parted from you in anger.  I spoke roughly, cruelly.  I said I
would never come to you again," he goes on, looking at her white
face--his own as white and sorrowful.  "I have longed often to ask
your pardon.  I do it now.  There is but one course open to me.  I
must leave this country.  I must leave any place that has a memory
of--you.  I think sometimes I shall go mad if I don't.  I think you
would be shocked, Lorry, if you could look into my soul and see the
utter blankness there.  I am not old, and there is no ice in my veins
yet, and forgetfulness won't come for trying any more than--love.
Oh, if it only would--if it only would!"

For an instant a sob rises in his throat and chokes his utterance.
He rises, ashamed of his weakness, and paces the room with hurried,
uneven steps.

"I am forgetting myself.  I did not mean to say such things," he says
presently.  "When I am with you I can think of nothing else.  Oh, my
darling! how _could_ you have given yourself away from me?  Will ever
any man love you as I have done, and do!"

Lauraine's heart is rent asunder by the fierce, unstudied pathos of
his words.  She sees that her own weakness has wrecked two lives
effectually, and now her whole soul is filled with anguish and with
dread.

"I can see at last that the only course for me to pursue is complete
avoidance of your presence," he goes on, coming over to the
mantelpiece as he speaks and leaning his arm upon it so as to keep
his face out of her sight.  "We should be all, or nothing, to each
other; and I being mad and reckless, and you good and pure, it is
easy to see which of the two is our fate."

"Good and pure!" cries Lauraine, with sudden passionate shame; "had I
been _that_ I should never have paltered with temptation one single
moment.  I should have been deaf to your entreaties and persuasions
that summer night.  I should have sent you from me then, not weakly
yielded to a course of action that has made me as wretched as
yourself."

"You could never be _that_," he says, looking down at her anguished
face.  "You are too cold, too proud.  But so much the better.  I
would not wish the worst foe I had to endure what I have endured for
you, and shall endure, I suppose, till I die.  That sounds rather
like mock heroics," he adds, with a little bitter laugh; "but I think
you know me better than to suppose it's 'put on.'  I made up my mind
when I saw you that I would tell you this farce could not go on.  I
shall tell Nan the same.  She's a good little thing, and is worth a
better fate than she would have as my wife.  God!  The mockery of
that word!  At night sometimes it is as if a chorus of fiends were
jabbering it in my ears, and driving me mad with the horrible sound."

"What will you say--how explain?" falters Lauraine.

"Oh, you need not be afraid that your name will suffer," he says,
with bitterness.  "I shall take care of that.  Let her think me the
mean, contemptible cur I am."

The hot cruel colour flies into Lauraine's cheeks.

"You are ungenerous to say that!" she exclaims.  "I am not afraid of
what any one says.  I know I am to blame.  But because I have erred
once it is no reason that I should do so again.  Right and wrong are
set plainly enough before us.  I have tried, feebly enough, to keep
to the straight path; I cannot forget duty, honour, so easily.  If I
could--if I had--oh, Keith, ask yourself, would your love be what it
is now?"

"No; it would not," he says slowly.  "Though I am so bitter against
you I would not have you shamed by my selfishness.  I--I think--so
much at least you have taught me.  But you--understand, do you not?
I cannot do impossibilities, and--now at last, I come to you to say
'Good-bye.'"

A sudden mist of tears dims her eyes.  It seems as if all around
grows cold and grey, and a barrier of ice stands between her and any
hope of happiness.

There is a long silence.  He still leans there, his head on his hand,
his face turned towards her as if to gaze his last on the beauty he
loves and remembers with so absorbed and passionate a fidelity.  Her
eyes, amidst those blinding tears, meet his own longing gaze.  She
rises from her seat and holds out her hand, while her voice, broken
and full of unutterable sadness, cries out: "Oh, Keith, what should I
say--what should I do?  May God have mercy on us both."

"If you wish His mercy on _you_, don't cry," says Keith hoarsely, "or
you will make me so desperate that I shall forfeit any little bit of
kindness you may still feel!  Be cold, cruel, scornful if you please,
but don't drive me mad with sight of your sorrow.  Mine I can
bear--it is no new friend.  But yours----"  Lauraine dashes the tears
from her eyes, and makes a violent effort at self-control.  "I cannot
ask you to forgive me," she says; "it would be better if you could
learn to hate me.  I wonder you do not, when you think of all the
sorrow I have brought into your life."

"I have tried my best to hate you," he says gloomily; "I _cannot_.
Do you suppose that if, by any deed, any power of will, I could tear
your memory from my heart, and once again know peace, that I would
not do it?  God knows how gladly!  But I cannot; I must go on
thinking of you, loving you----"

He ceases abruptly, then goes on:

"And once you put your arms round my neck and told me you would be
mine 'for ever.'  There are times now when I seem to feel that soft
touch and the thrill of your unasked kiss, and--and then, Lorry, I
remember that 'for ever' meant less than--four years."

"You--you promised," falters Lauraine.

"Yes, you are right.  So I did.  I seem to do nothing but make
promises and break them with you.  Well, there is one comfort, after
to-day I shall have no chance of doing either one or other.  There
can be no distance too wide to set between our lives.  And--oh God,
to think of what might have been!"

"Life is full of mistakes," says Lauraine, weeping unrestrainedly
now.  "Oh, had I but known--had I but known!  Yet, Keith, something
tells me that time will bring you consolation--time and the
consciousness that you have done right."

"Your words are beyond my powers of acceptance," he answers gloomily.
"If I am doing right now, it is from no good motive, I assure you.
If again you said to me 'Stay,' there would be no more parting this
side the grave, Lorry, for you and me."

His voice is very low and unsteady, but she hears every word, and all
the wild love and longing, the weariness and emptiness of her life,
seem beating like waves against the poor weak barriers of honour.

"I think I would give all the world to be able to say it to-day," she
cries, with sudden passion.  "But, oh, Keith! the 'to-morrow,' that
would follow; the sin and misery that would be with us both for ever!
Is life or love worth one's eternal ruin?  Is our parting now to be
compared to that 'other' parting that would have to follow--the
eternal parting that would be so hopeless because of the guilt that
lay upon our souls?"

"I do not think a great love can ever be a sin," Keith answers
passionately.  "And mine would last you if ever human love did last.
So much I know of myself, bad as I am."

"You are not bad," says Lauraine gently.  "And I am sure you won't
threaten me with the worse misery of your recklessness as once before
you did.  The nobler and better your life, the less will be my
suffering.  And you won't be cruel enough to add to that, will you?"

The pleading voice, the tearful eyes, unman him.  "Why don't you
abuse me, condemn me, call me the selfish brute I am?" he says, with
that rapid contrition that so often marks his wildest moods.  "No,
Lorry, I won't be 'bad' if I can help it.  I wouldn't wish to add to
your suffering, though I am so selfish.  Let me go now, while I have
strength, while the good fit is on me.  It mayn't last, you know, and
then----"

He is standing facing her, and white as death she looks up and meets
the mournful gaze of the "bad blue eyes."  There is no badness in
them now, only a great anguish and a great despair.  One long, long
look they give--a look that seems to read her heart, and all its love
that she denies, and all its suffering that he has given.  He takes
her hands and draws her near, nearer.  She trembles like a leaf.  Her
eyelids droop, her lips quiver.

"May I--kiss you?" he whispers.

She makes no answer in words, for speech is beyond her.  She forgets
everything now, save that she loves, and that this is an eternal
farewell to her lover.

There comes such a moment of forgetfulness to all women who love,
otherwise, indeed, there would be none to fall for love's sake only.
Otherwise, how easy would be the conflict that, of all others is the
wildest, the fiercest, and hardest to wage.

She lifts her head.  The anguish, the entreaty in her eyes frighten,
and yet gladden him.  For in this moment he feels he is master of her
fate, and she is unconscious of the fact.  Did he but hold her in his
arms--did the tide of passion, locked back within his throbbing
heart, find vent in one word, one caress, he knows he could not
answer for himself--for her!

It is the critical moment of Keith Athelstone's life.  All that is
best and worst in his heart are at war; all that is most hard to
resist wraps him in a flame of tempting that burns away all good
resolves, and almost stifles the faint whispers of a conscience that
pleads for her.

For her--for her.  To save her from _herself_ as well as from his own
mad love.  To leave her unharmed, untainted by the baseness of his
selfish passion; to be worthy of love, as love had been in those
sweet, glad, childish days.  These thoughts flash like lightning
through his brain, even as he meets her mournful eyes, and reads
their unconscious betrayal.

"Oh, love, good-bye!  Let me go!" he cries wildly, and throws her
hands aside with almost cruel force.

He is blind and dizzy with pain.  A word, a look from her, and he
knows that his strength will be broken like a reed--that he will
never leave her again; and in his blindness and dizziness and agony
of heart he rushes away, flings the door wide open, and finds himself
face to face with--Sir Francis Vavasour!




CHAPTER XXV

Fate delights in playing mankind spiteful tricks.

The present instance is no exception.  Lauraine has sunk back into
her chair, faint and spent with emotion; scarcely conscious, indeed,
of what is going on around her; and in this state her husband's rough
voice breaks upon her ear.

"What the devil's the matter?  I met Athelstone flying out like a
bomb-shell, and you look like a ghost.  Have you been having
a--fraternal quarrel?"

She starts to her feet and looks at him with wild, wide eyes.
"Francis, you--" she gasps.

"You don't seem very pleased to see me," says her husband, looking at
her suspiciously.  "What on earth have you been doing with yourself?
You look as ill as possible."  He takes her hand and kisses her
carelessly on the cheek as he speaks.

"I have not been well," she falters, trying for composure, "and
Etwynde asked me to come to her for a few weeks, and I thought the
change would do me good.  How is it you are in London?  Did you know
I was here?"

"Yes.  I got your letter at the club and came on.  I only arrived
last night."

He throws himself into a chair, and looks at her curiously.  "What
was the row with Athelstone?--you haven't told me."  Lauraine grows
very white.

"He is going abroad--away for years.  His engagement is all over.  He
came to say good-bye."

Sir Francis gives a long whistle.

"_Nom de Dieu_?  Is that so?  And have you had a hand in breaking it
off, my lady?"

"What do you mean?" she asks, looking at him with grave surprise.

"Mean?  Oh, you and Keith were such chums always.  I thought he had
done it because you--objected.  I know you never liked the marriage."

"It had nothing to do with me," says Lauraine coldly.  "And the girl
was very fond of him.  I am sorry for her."

"It strikes me that Jean wasn't so far out, after all," says Sir
Francis, with a harsh laugh.  "You and Keith _do_ seem to have a
remarkably good understanding with each other."

Lauraine looks at him, her eyes dark with anger.  "Since when have
you taken to speak so familiarly of Lady Jean Salomans?" she asks;
"and by what right does she discuss my actions with you?"

"Come, that won't do," says her husband, throwing himself back in his
chair, and looking at her defiantly.  "It's rather too like the
proverb of the pot and the kettle.  You discuss me with Keith
Athelstone, I have no doubt, and--other things too."

"Do you mean to insult me?" asks Lauraine, rising from her seat, and
looking steadily at him.  He shrugs his shoulders.

"You are always so tragic.  Insult you?  No.  Only before you
question my actions, it might be as well to look at your own.  Are
they quite--blameless?"

She stands there, and all the colour fades from her face; her limbs
tremble.  "I will not affect to misunderstand you," she says slowly.
"But----"

He interrupted her roughly.  "Don't trouble to explain.  Of course we
all know you are _sans reproche_.  Only don't turn the cold shoulder
to other women, when you yourself are no better than they--seem.
Were I a jealous husband I should have forbidden Keith Athelstone
your presence long ere this."

"There would have been no need," she says proudly.  "I am not a woman
to forget honour and self-respect."

"Oh, fine words are easy," scoffs her husband.  "To the untempted
virtue is no merit.  And although any one could see Keith Athelstone
was making himself a fool about you, yet you never cared a straw for
him.  If you had----"

"Well?" she asks, very low, as he pauses.

He laughs again.  "You would have been no better than--others, I
suppose.  What you call self-respect is only another word for
cold-heartedness."

Lauraine thinks of the scene through which she has just passed.
Cold-hearted?  Well, if she be, she thanks God for the fact.  That
her husband should speak thus to her fills her with an intense shame.
After all, would he have cared so very much, if----  The evil thought
coils round her like a serpent, she feels sick and stifled, and full
of pain and fear.

"I am going to my room," she says hurriedly.  "Will you excuse me?
I--I am not very well."

"_Ma chére_," laughs her husband roughly, "one doesn't stand on
ceremony after a few years of married life.  Don't stay here for me.
I'm off too, now.  I have heaps of things to do."

"Will you dine with us to-night?" asks Lauraine.

"To-night?  Well, yes.  I suppose it will look better, and I should
like to see what sort of fellow your æsthetic friend has captured.
Jove! if men only knew what fools they are to marry!"

But Lauraine has left.  Sir Francis takes up his hat.  His face is
dark and disturbed.

"Jean was right.  There is something," he mutters.  "But Lauraine is
not like--her.  Should I be better pleased if she were?  Sometimes I
think I would give the world for freedom; and yet----"

The door opens.  Lady Etwynde sweeps in, as radiant and fair a vision
as eyes could wish to behold.

"Sir Francis!  You here, and alone!  Why, where is Lauraine?"

"Gone to her room.  Not well, or tired, or something," he says, as he
shakes hands.  "I am glad you have had her here; she mopes herself to
death down at the Chase.  I can't see what she is so fond of it for.
I detest it myself."

"There are associations, you see," says Lady Etwynde.  "Her child was
born there, and there died."

He feels somewhat ashamed.  He thinks of his wife--how young, how
sorrowful she looked; how all the life and radiance seemed crushed
out of her heart.  But then the old weariness and impatience assert
themselves.  Life with Lauraine has been so flat and monotonous.

"Well, at all events it does not agree with her," he says, brusquely.
"I was glad to find her in town.  I got her letter at the club."

"Will you dine with us to-night?" asks Lady Etwynde.  "We are quite
alone, so it won't be very lively, and you have had so much brilliant
society lately."

He looks quickly at her.  He is always suspicious of women's words;
always given to looking under them for some hidden meaning.  But Lady
Etwynde's face is innocence itself.

"Thanks.  Yes.  I told Lauraine I would come," he says, not very
cordially, for indeed an evening with these two women looks a dreary
penance to him.

"And you will stay here, will you not?" says Lady Etwynde.  "You
won't go back to an hotel while Lauraine is in town?"

"Oh, I could not think of inflicting myself upon you," he says
hurriedly: "and it is such a flying visit--thanks all the same.  And
now, good-bye till to-night."

"Good-bye," says Lady Etwynde coldly.  She thinks his behaviour both
strange and callous, and very uncomplimentary to his wife.  Then he
leaves, and she goes to Lauraine, and finds her lying in a darkened
room, white, and spent and exhausted.

"My dear, what is it?" she asks, in alarm.  "Has anything happened?
Are you ill?"  For a moment Lauraine hesitates.  Then the sight of
the sweet, compassionate face melts the hardness that she fain would
keep about her heart, and in a few broken words she relates the whole
sad tale of that interview and farewell.

"My only comfort is that at last he will go--surely he will leave
me," she says, in conclusion.  "Indeed, it is time.  The strain is
more than I can bear.  Besides, Sir Francis has noticed it--he said
so; and his words were scarce a greater insult than I deserved, for
if I have not sinned as the world counts sin, yet I have not been
guiltless--far from it."

Lady Etwynde looks at her wistfully.  In her own great happiness she
can feel tenfold the sorrowful fate of these sundered lives.  "And he
is going to break off his marriage?" she says anxiously.

"Yes," says Lauraine.  "He says to go through with it is beyond his
power."

"Poor fellow!" exclaims Lady Etwynde, with involuntary compassion.

She is angry with him, and yet sorry for him, for he has proved so
faithful; and, after all, is any love quite unselfish if it be worth
the name?

"My poor Lauraine!" she murmurs involuntarily.  "Your marriage has
indeed been a fatal error; but, as I have said before, there remains
nothing but to make the best of it.  The only thing for you and Keith
is separation.  All other feelings except that one forbidden one are
a poor pretence.  I feared that long ago.  I am glad you have been so
brave, and he too.  Believe me, hard as duty is, the very effort of
doing it creates strength for further trials.  The consciousness of
right is a satisfaction in itself, even when one is misjudged."

Lauraine listens, and the tears stand on her lashes, and roll slowly
down her cheeks.

"My life is very hard," she says bitterly.

"Would it be less hard if you had ceased to respect yourself, if you
had lost the creeds and faiths which still make honour your one
anchor of safety?  I think not."

"I can think of nothing now save him and his unhappiness," cries
Lauraine wildly.  "I have never loved him as I love him to-day.  Oh!
I know it is wrong, shameful to say such a thing; but it is the
truth, and I must speak it--this once.  Why, do you know that when he
said good-bye to me I could have flung myself at his feet and said,
'Let the world go by, let sin or misery be my portion for
evermore--only do not you leave me!'  It seemed as if nothing in life
was worth anything beside one hour of love!  And yet--well, how good
an actress I must be, Etwynde--he called me cold-hearted."

"Thank God he did!" exclaims Lady Etwynde.  "Oh, Lauraine, your good
angel must have saved you to-day.  I did not think it had come to
this; and I cannot find it in my heart to blame you, for--I love too."

"And my husband taunted me with being no better than other women,
simply because I had never been tempted," continues Lauraine
presently.  "Well, perhaps in heart I am not.  He may have been
right, and virtue is, after all, only a matter of--temperament."

"Oh, hush!  I cannot bear to hear you talk like that," cries Lady
Etwynde.  "Does he--does Sir Francis suspect anything?"

"He said he knew Keith loved me," answers Lauraine wearily.  "Fancy
hearing one's husband speak of the love of another man!  I felt
treacherous--shamed in his sight and my own.  He could not
understand--he would not believe in the long, long struggle, the
pain, the suffering of it all.  I feel as if conscience and honour
had both suffered in the conflict, as if with my child I had lost all
that was pure and of any worth in me.  And now the world may say what
it likes.  I don't care even to contradict it."

"That is not true," exclaims Lady Etwynde.  "You have struggled
nobly, you have done your best, and the fruits of the victory will be
yours in time.  At least you hold the hope of meeting your little
child, innocent and unshamed, despite fierce tempting and all the
weariness and sorrow of your life."

Lauraine's tears fall faster and more fast.

"My child!  Oh, why was he not left to me?  The touch of his innocent
kiss, the sound of his voice, the clasp of his arms were strong as
all the chains of duty cannot be.  And now there is no one--no one.
And I am so lonely, so desolate, and life looks so long, and death so
far away!"

The tears rush to Lady Etwynde's eyes.  "Oh, my darling!  What can I
say to comfort you?  Do you know, Lauraine once--in years that are
gone--when I felt reckless and despairing as yourself, I left the
house, and went out full of some wild resolve too terrible to
mention.  It was a Sunday evening, I remember well.  The bells were
sounding everywhere, and I walked on through the quiet streets with
madness in my heart.  Suddenly, as I passed the open door of a
church, I heard a voice singing.  Involuntarily I stopped, listened,
entered.  It was a large church, and full of people.  Some one gave
me a chair, and I sank down wearily enough.  Then, pealing above the
chords of the organ, floating up to the great vaulted roof, I heard
again the beautiful voice, and it sang these words: 'O rest in the
Lord; wait patiently for Him, and He shall give thee thy heart's
desire.'  You know them, do you not, and the music that weds them so
exquisitely from the 'Elijah'?  I knelt there with my head bowed on
my hands, and the tears falling down my cheeks.  I remembered
nothing; neither place nor presence.  It only seemed as if an angel's
voice was breathing comfort to my passion-wrecked soul, as if that
beautiful promise fell over my spirit and brought peace, and healing,
and rest.' 'Thy heart's desire!'  Oh, Lauraine, think of that!
Twelve long years ago that message came to me, and I was comforted!
Twelve years, and now God _has_ fulfilled His promise.  My heart's
desire is mine."

Lauraine has listened, stilled and awed.

"Thy heart's desire."  The words sink into her very soul, and wake a
thousand varied emotions.

"But my 'heart's desire' is all wrong--all sin--whichever way I look
at it," she says, half despairingly.

"God can make it right," whispers Lady Etwynde drawing the white, sad
face down upon her bosom, and softly kissing the weary lips.  "If you
can take those words home to your heart as I did, my darling, your
burden will grow easier to bear; the strength you ask for will be
given.  Oh, life is hard, terribly hard, I know!  There is so much
sorrow, so little joy; and then the errors, the sins which beset, the
weakness that shackles us!--but still, still, we are not tried
_beyond_ our strength, and we may be able at last to look back and
see it was all for the best!"

"What would I not give to recall these last four years!" cries
Lauraine bitterly.  "How different my life might have been!"

"There's no turning back," says Lady Etywnde solemnly.  "Errors, once
committed, are irrevocable; for them we must suffer; by them we must
abide.  Ah, my dear! who would not live their time again if they
might, and by the light of the present alter all the mistakes of the
past?  But it cannot be done.  All the remorse and all the regret are
so futile.  Tears of blood cannot wash away one memory, take out the
sting of one mistake.  We must just bear life as it is, till Death
seals all its woes into forgetfulness."

"You are so good," cries Lauraine sadly.  "I am not like you.  I am
wicked and rebellious, and I cannot accept my fate with patience,
even though I know my own past weakness is to blame for all my
present misery."

"I am not good.  Do not praise me," says Lady Etwynde humbly.  "And I
know I do not deserve my present happiness.  It makes me fearful of
my great joy.  For I was so wicked and rebellious once, and I wonder
often that God did not take my life instead of sparing it, and
blessing it as He has done.  Now, darling, you look worn out, and
must need rest.  I will leave you for awhile.  If your husband
suspects anything you must try and banish such suspicions, or your
married life will grow yet more unhappy.  The great wrench is over,
the worst is past.  Time, and the consciousness of having done what
is right, will give you peace and comfort at last.  Youth and
strength are yours still, and many good gifts of life, and if you
throw yourself into others' sufferings, and widen your sympathy with
the interests and trials of those around you, believe me it will do
much to making your own troubles less.  I speak from an experience as
bitter as, if less hopeless, than your own."  And once more kissing
the closed lips which seem too weary for tears, she lays Lauraine
back on the pillows, and softly leaves the room.

"'Thy heart's desire!'" Lauraine cries to herself.  "Oh, God--not
that--not that should be my prayer.  Teach my heart to say, 'Thy
will, not mine!'"




CHAPTER XXVI

When Keith Athelstone leaves Lauraine that morning he is scarcely
conscious of what he is doing.

And yet with his brain whirling, with a desperate sense of his life's
complete failure oppressing his heart, he goes straight to his
_fiancée's_ house and asks to see her.

Miss Nan flies into the room, as she expresses it, "like greased
lightning."

"Well, what's the matter?" she cries.  "Has the bank broke, or has
Worth failed, or----  Why, Keith," (with sudden gravity), "are you
ill?"

Her voice seems to recall his senses.  He sits down and looks sadly
at the radiant little figure.

"Nan," he says brokenly, "I--I have come to say that I have behaved
to you like a cad, a brute.  I have no excuse to offer.  I can only
tell you the plain truth, and that is----"

"Stop!" she cries suddenly; and all her airs and affectations seem to
fall off her, leaving only a quiet, pale-faced little maiden, whose
big, bright eyes are clouded and sad.  "I know what you mean.  You
don't love me.  It is not what comes to me, Keith, only I thought I
might help to console you, being so fond of you as I was,
for--she--can be nothing to you after all."

"You--you know----" stammers Keith.

"Know, of course I know," she answers, with pretty contempt.  "Do you
think I was reared in Boston and can't see a little bit through a
stone wall, specially when that stone wall has some mighty big chinks
to let the daylight in?  Know--why, who doesn't know that's ever seen
you and 'my Lady Lauraine' together?"

The colour mounts to Keith's brow.  "And I have done her all this
harm," he thinks.  "Don't be afraid to speak out to me," continues
Nan.  "I'm too fond of you to be cross, and I know you've tried your
best to be true to me.  We'd best forget that we ever thought of
being more than friends.  Don't you trouble to explain.  If you
hadn't said this, I should have done so before it came to the real
business.  I don't want to marry a man whose heart is set on another
woman, and you loved her before you knew me--didn't you?"

"Yes," he says quickly.  "Since we were boy and girl together."

"And why did she jilt you?" asked Dresden China tranquilly.  Her
heart is so full, and pained, and angry, that she is afraid of
betraying herself.

"She was forced into marrying another man during my absence," says
Keith coldly.  "I was forbidden to write, and when I trusted--well,
it was her mother--to tell her about myself--my changed fortunes--she
never did.  When I came back from New York she was married."

"If she'd have been worth her salt she'd have kept true to you," says
Nan.  "I don't believe in girls caving in, and marrying to please
other people.  I wouldn't, not for fifty mothers, leave alone one."

"No, you are a staunch little thing," says Keith, looking up at the
bright _mignonne_ face; "and you are worth a man's whole heart and
life, Nan, and I feel I am neither worth the offering nor the
acceptance.  I have been a fool; but at last I seem to see my folly,
and I am going to make one vigorous effort to conquer it.  I am going
to leave England--perhaps for ever."

"I think it is the very best thing you can do," she says quietly.
"What is the use of wasting your life, and eating your heart out for
a woman who can be nothing to you?"

"And you will forgive me my treachery to yourself?"

"My dear Keith," she says, with a little quivering smile.  "I knew
you were making a cat's-paw of me, but somehow I didn't mind that so
much, if it would have been any real good to you.  In time, I thought
perhaps you might have got fond of me.  Lots of men are, you know;
but I began to see that it wouldn't do--that you couldn't take to me,
and no wonder, when I was so different to--her.  But as for
forgiving, that's no big thing to do.  And I never bear malice;
'tisn't in me.  Yes, you go right straight away out of the country,
and I'll make all this look natural enough, don't you fear.  You're
not the first young man I've knocked off by many.  I'm a born flirt,
they say.  Well, I'm only acting up to my character."

Behind the bright eyes is a weight of tears she longs to shed, and
will not.  The brave little heart is throbbing and aching with pain.
But Keith sees nothing, suspects nothing.  He is only relieved she
takes it so well, that after all she does not seem to care so very
much.

He rises and holds out his hands.  "You are far too good to me, Nan,"
he says brokenly.  "I feel ashamed when I think of my conduct.  God
bless you, child, and make you happy."

"Too good to you," echoes Nan softly.  "I don't know.  It strikes me,
Keith, that you are just the sort of fellow women would be 'good to.'
I surmise they can't help it.  It's just your way with them, you
know.  So it's really 'Good-bye.'  Take my advice and go to the
Rockies and shoot grizzlies.  That'll cure you if anything will."

Not by any means a romantic parting, or a touching one; but it is a
very faithful heart that masks its pain so bravely, and a very loving
one too.


A week later, and town is eagerly discussing two startling pieces of
news.  One is that Keith Athelstone, the rich young American, has
sailed for Timbuctoo or Tahiti, or New Zealand, people are not quite
sure which; the other that Joel Salomans, the great millionaire, has
come to smash over some gigantic speculation, and has blown his
brains out in his hotel in Paris.


In the deepest of mourning, with her handsome brows drawn into an
angry frown, with a pile of letters and papers on the table before
her, sits Lady Jean.  "It is ruin, simply ruin!" she mutters
fiercely, as she pushes the pile impatiently aside and looks at the
long column of figures before her.

Ruin to her means some five hundred a year, secured to herself, and a
country house bought and settled on her by Mr. Salomans a year
before.  She is at present in Paris.  It is a week since her
husband's death, and the scandal and _esclandre_ are flying
everywhere, and adorning special articles in all the society journals.

Lady Jean feels very bitter against the dead man, and very bitter
against everything in general.  She has had but few condolences, and
those have been spiced with feminine malice.  She is quite alone in
her hotel in the Rue Scribe, and her lawyer has worried her into a
headache this morning with explanations and formalities.  While she
is in this unamiable mood the door opens, and Sir Francis Vavasour
enters.  Lady Jean blushes scarlet as she rises to greet him.  To do
her justice the emotion is genuine enough.  She has thought herself
forsaken--forgotten.  "You--how good of you!" she says, and holds out
both her hands.  He takes them and draws her towards him, and kisses
her many times.  She does not rebuke him; the days for pretence have
long been over between them.

"And so you are--free?" he says.

"And penniless and--disgraced, you should add," she answers, sinking
down on the couch by his side.  "This horrible scandal will kill me,
I think."  This is all her regret for the dead man she has deceived,
goaded, embarrassed by her extravagances, and wantonly neglected and
ridiculed through all her married life.

"Oh, no, it won't," says Sir Francis consolingly.  "Scandal never
killed any one yet, especially a woman.  But are things very bad?"

Lady Jean explains as well as she can the lawyer's wearisome phrases,
and her own definition of ruin.

"And what will you do?" asks Sir Francis.

"I have scarcely thought about it yet.  I can't live at Norristown,
it would be absurd.  I must let it.  Oh, Frank, isn't it hard?  Fancy
a life like this for--me!"

"It is a trial, certainly," he says, pulling his thick moustache with
an abstracted air.  "I don't know what the deuce you're to do, unless
you let me help you."

She laughs contemptuously.  "No, thank you.  We'll stop short of
money favours.  I haven't come to that yet."

"But what can you do?" persisted Sir Francis.  "Five hundred pounds a
year!  Why, it wouldn't keep you in gowns for three months--and do
you expect to eat, drink, pay rent, and clothe yourself, on such a
beggar's pittance?"

"Oh, I shall get into debt for a year, of course," says Lady Jean
coolly, "and then--marry--I suppose."

He turns very white.  "You say that to--me?"

"My dear Frank, why not?  You are a man of the world; you don't
suppose I am going to stagnate in poverty and obscurity till some
happy chance gives you the freedom I possess.  Not I--pshaw! it is
absurd.  I must do the best for myself.  You are not surely so
selfish as to expect me to throw away a good chance for--you."

"I thought you loved me," he says gloomily; "you told me so."

"Love you!  Of course I love you!  But what use--now, any more than
before?  Do you expect fidelity in a case like ours?  We have both
outlived the age of romance, and now, of course, I must be doubly
cautious not to draw down calumny on my head.  Were you free it would
be a different matter.  But, of course, your wife is a saint, and
Keith Athelstone an anchorite.  Fraternal affection, when unfettered
by fraternity, is so pure and beautiful a thing!"

He groans impatiently.  "I know what you mean.  But she never cared
for him; and now he has broken off his projected marriage, and left
England."

Lady Jean looks up in surprise.

"Left England?  Are you sure?"

"Lauraine said so, and every one is talking of it."

"Lauraine told you so!  Ah, how beautiful is faith!  Did I not tell
you that marriage would never be?  What reason does he give for
breaking it off?"

"Oh, the girl says she broke it off because they could not agree
about furnishing their drawing-room.  She is as larky and perky as
ever, and treats the whole thing as a joke.  Has got the young Earl
of Longleat mad after her now, and I suppose will end in marrying
him."

"And Keith has--left England," says Lady Jean musingly; "or is that a
blind?  Where is your saint?"

"Lauraine?  She is staying with her æsthetic friend in Kensington.
No, Jean.  With all due respect to your 'cuteness, that won't do.  I
tell you Lauraine doesn't care two straws for the fellow, though he
is madly in love with her.  Why, I met him rushing out of the house
like a lunatic the day he came to say 'Good-bye.'  Never saw a fellow
in such a state in my life, and she--she was as cool and cold as
possible.  Said he was going away to some foreign place or another."

"He has not gone!" says Lady Jean tranquilly.  "I won't mind an even
bet of a cool thou' on that point, Frank.  While England holds
Lauraine, it will hold Keith Athelstone.  Of that I am quite
convinced."

"I think you mistake her," says Sir Francis coldly.

"She is human, and she loves," answers Lady Jean.  "Of course she is
of a much higher type than ordinary women--cast in a nobler mould,
and all that.  But still----"  She pauses meaningly.  Sir Francis
moves with sudden impatience.  "Why talk of her?" he says.  "You know
I hate her."

"I know nothing of the sort," retorts Lady Jean.  "You were very
madly in love with her once, and you paid a high enough price for
your fancy, and you believe in her still."

"One can respect a woman, even if one dislikes her," mutters Sir
Francis.

Lady Jean's eyes flash fire beneath their lowered lids.  What she has
forfeited she hates to hear praised as another woman's possession.

"I am glad you find her such a paragon of virtue," she sneers.  "And
it must be a novel sensation for you to--respect--a woman."

"It is--rather," he answers in the same tone.  "There are not many
who give us the chance!"

"I think your visit has lasted long enough," says Lady Jean coldly.
"As I told you before, I have to be doubly careful of _les
convenances_; I am glad you did not give your name.  And please do
not call again until I send you word."

"You have grown mighty particular all of a sudden," exclaimed Sir
Francis angrily.  "Why the deuce shouldn't I call if I please?  We
are old friends, and surely----"

"Oh, certainly we are old friends," says Lady Jean maliciously.  "But
you see it behoves me to be careful.  I have my future prospects to
consider."

"Jean!  You are not in earnest, you are only trying me?"

"_Mon cher_, I was never more in earnest in my life.  I am not going
to be a martyr to one man's misguided rashness, or another's selfish
passion.  Not I indeed.  _Ce n'est pas mon métier_.  No; I shall do
the best for myself, as I have said before; and you will be
magnanimous, I know, and permit the--sacrifice."

"I don't know so much about that," says Sir Francis, an evil light
gleaming in his eyes.  "You are too much to me for me ever to yield
you up to another man.  Of course before--well, that could not be
helped.  But now----"

"Now," says Lady Jean, with her cold smile, "you have learnt that to
_respect_ a woman is better than to love her.  I only wish to follow
your good example.  I should like to be able to--respect--a man."

"Then by all means don't marry one," retorts Sir Francis.  "But,
joking apart, Jean, you are not serious?  You are not going to throw
me off in this fashion?"

"I said nothing about 'throwing off.'  I only said it behoved me to
be careful--doubly careful; and if you come to see me now, you must
come with--your wife."

"My wife!" He stares at her stupidly.

"Certainly.  As a widow I cannot receive constant visits from married
men unaccompanied by their wives.  It would never do.  I cannot
suffer you to humiliate me; I care too much for--myself!"

"I wish to heaven I could understand you," mutters Sir Francis.
"Well, at all events, for a year, you can't carry out your threat."

She has him in such complete subjugation that he does not bluster or
insist as with a weak-minded woman he would have done.  Lady Jean has
always ruled him with a strong hand, as a bad woman will often rule a
man who yet owes her no fidelity, and has for her no respect.

"I may never carry it out," she says, with a sudden softening of her
voice.  "Perhaps, after all, I--love--you too well, though you don't
believe it.  But, as I said before, of what use--of what use?"

His brow clears, his anger melts.  "If I could only believe you!" he
says.

"Ah!" she answers, with humility, "if I had loved _myself_ better
than you, I, too, might have had your respect.  But I was not wise
enough to be selfish."

"For your love I would forfeit any other consideration!" he cries
impetuously.  "You know that well enough.  Whatever you desire, I
will do it; only don't forsake me."

"Whatever I desire," says Lady Jean, a slow, cruel smile flitting
over her face.  "Well, I will give you a task.  Ask Keith Athelstone
to Falcon's Chase for Christmas."




CHAPTER XXVII

Lady Jean is right.  Keith Athelstone has _not_ left England.  His
passage was taken, all his preparations made, and then the very day
before he was to sail he found himself laid prostrate by brain fever.

He was taken ill in Liverpool, and his servant, being one of that
rare class who can give faithful attendance, nursed him devotedly.
For weeks he lay hovering between life and death, the strength and
vigour of the body fighting against the ravages of mental suffering,
and the long, painful strain on brain and heart against which he had
so long struggled.  In his delirious frenzy his whole cry was for
Lauraine.  It was pitiful to see that strong young manhood bowed down
to a child's weakness.  As dependent as an infant on the hired
services which his wealth procured, but which was so different to the
tender ministry of love and friendship.

The discreet valet at times felt inclined to send to Lady Vavasour,
and acquaint her with his young master's danger; but prudence
withheld him.  He knew she was married, and he feared to draw down
his master's anger by officious interference.

At last the doctors gave hope, and Keith struggled back by slow
degrees into convalescence, and saw his life given back to his own
keeping once more--life dull of hue and sad enough, with all its
gladness and colour painted out by the ruthless hand of
disappointment--life for which he was in no way glad or grateful to
the mercy that had spared it; but still, life that he had to accept
and take up, with all its tangled threads and broken hopes.

In the long, dreary days of convalescence he thought of Lauraine as
he had never thought of her yet--for a wide gulf seemed to stretch
between them now.  He saw the headlong and undisciplined passion of
his love for her in its true colours--saw to what lengths it would
have gone, to what ruin it would have dragged her, and a sense of
shame and self-reproach filled his heart.

Some such thoughts as these came to Keith now as he lay stretched on
his couch during these dark winter days.  He felt weak enough to have
uttered any prayer just for Lauraine's presence, just to see the pity
in her eyes, to hear the thrill in her voice as she would look at his
changed face, and speak her gentle compassion.  At times like these
the slow hot tears of weakness would creep into his eyes until he was
fain to turn his head away from his attendant's gaze, and make
pretence of sleep in order to have freedom to indulge his grief at
leisure.

"I must never see her again, never, unless I have grown dull and
cold, and can greet her as a stranger," he thinks to himself.  "How
strange that I should love her so.  I wonder will I ever be cured, or
will this be the 'one passion of my life,' going down to my grave
with me even as it has filled all my days and hours?  Somehow, I
think it will.  I find it so hard to forget anything concerning her.
Forget!  Why there is not a look in her eyes, a word from her lips,
not a dress or a flower she has worn that I can forget; not a summer
day or a spring morning, not a season in the year that is not full of
some memory of her.  Oh, my love, my love, and to think that you can
be nothing to me--nothing!

"Shall I ever be old, I wonder?--and then shall I have ceased to
care?  Out of all the world of women will there be only one for whom
my heart will beat, my pulses thrill, my whole soul long and love?  I
have tried to love other women--I have told them I love them; but I
don't think for one moment I deceived myself, or them.  Men say the
sins and follies of youth come back to smite us as scourges in the
after years; but I suppose my love has kept me pure in a way, and
will do so.  It was never sin to me till her own act made it so, for
she seemed always mine in my thoughts and dreams, and I alone seemed
to have the right to her.  But now--well, she was wiser than I when
she bade me leave her.  This last year has only made us both more
wretched.  And she is not happy--my darling!  Ah, when she loved me
there was not that sad look in her eyes, and that brute is not even
faithful.  But of that she knows nothing, and, bad as I am, I
wouldn't tell her so.  Let her keep her faith unshaken, and live her
life of duty.  Why should I make it harder than it is? .... Every
year now will take her further and further from me, and yet I know
she loves me.  I wonder what held me back when I bade her farewell?
I could have taught her forgetfulness then, if never before; and
yet--and yet, thank God, I did not.  I think to see her eyes reproach
me would be worse than this; I should feel inclined to kill myself
and--her.  Oh, God! what fools men can be for a woman's sake!"


Some one comes softly into the room; it is Andrews the careful and
attentive.  He brings a letter in his hand, and lays it down on the
table by his young master's side.  Keith turns towards him, and holds
out a thin transparent hand for the missive.  He tears open the
envelope, and as he looks at the address a flush of colour steals
over his face.


  "Falcon's Chase, Brockfield,
      "Northumberland.

"MY DEAR ATHELSTONE,

"We have only just heard of your illness, and are much concerned
about it, more especially as you are alone at an hotel, and must be
dependent on quite alien services.  As soon as ever your health
permits, will you come to us here, and let us try to nurse you back
to health once more?  As the weather is so unusually mild, I do not
think you will find the air of Northumberland too bracing.  Lauraine,
of course, joins with me in this invitation.  In fact, we can't hear
of a refusal.  I will meet you in London, and come down with you as
soon as ever your physicians give you permission for the journey.
With my kindest regards, and sympathy from all mutual friends here,

  "Believe me, very sincerely yours,
        "FRANCIS S. VAVASOUR."


Keith reads the letter steadily through to the end, and his face
grows white as the paper as he so reads it.  But a new, stern look
comes into his eyes, and his lips close tight under their thick
moustache.

"What does it mean?" he thinks, as he reads the subtle tempting.
"Can Lauraine _really_ have had any hand in this?  I don't believe
it.  No; I will not go.  The snare is too plainly set."  And before
he can have time to alter his mind he asks for pen and ink, and
dashes off a firm but courteous refusal on the plea of his physicians
ordering him to a warm climate.

"She shall never have to reproach me again if I can help it," he says
to himself, as exhausted with even this small exertion, he sinks back
on his pillows.  "She called me selfish once.  Will she do so
now?--now, when for her sake----"


There is only a very small house party at Falcon's Chase when Keith
Athelstone's letter arrives, and the master of the house reads it
with a clouded brow.  He has insisted upon his wife's asking Lady
Jean down, and, despite her recent bereavement, the Lady Jean accepts
the invitation.  She is very subdued, very mournful, lives a great
deal in her own rooms, and altogether affords a very unobtrusive
spectacle of chastened sorrow.  She is more than ever gracious to her
hostess, and dignified to her host, and even Lady Etwynde's observant
eyes can see nothing in any way suspicious.

On the morning that Keith's letter arrives Lady Jean is not at the
breakfast-table and Sir Francis is impatient to tell her the news--so
impatient in fact, that for once he forgets the prudence she has so
strictly enjoined, and sends her a note by her maid asking her to
come into the small study adjoining the library as soon as she can.

Lady Jean is annoyed at his imprudence, and in no way hurries herself
to suit his wishes.  When she at last enters the study she finds Sir
Francis fuming at being kept waiting, and decidedly unamiable.

"Well, what is it?" she asks.

He hands her Keith's letter, and she reads it through.  Her brows
cloud; she throws it aside impatiently.

"The young fool!" she mutters.

On entering the smaller room she has drawn the door after her, but
not quite closed it.  The velvet curtains sweep down, and no one from
the library can see them, but the sound of their voices is audible.
It happens that Lauraine enters the outer room for a book, and is
just taking it down from the case when the sound of her own name,
uttered by Lady Jean's voice, strikes sharply on her ear.

"Does Lauraine know?"

"No," answers her husband's voice.  "As you advised, I said nothing
about it.  Had Athelstone accepted, I would have told her that I had
heard of his dangerous illness, and asked him here to set him up
again."

"How excessively provoking!" continues Lady Jean.  "Depend on it,
Frank, this is a blind.  Either Keith suspects we know of his love
for your wife, or she has been beforehand."

"My dear Jean!" exclaims Sir Francis.

Lauraine waits to hear no more.  Astonishment has kept her
spellbound.  Now she turns from the room with a sickening, horrible
sense of shame in her heart, with the blood dyeing her white face,
with all the dignity and pride of womanhood stung and outraged by
this unexpected discovery.  Her husband and Lady Jean are cognizant
of Keith's mad passion for herself, have actually plotted to bring
him under her roof, to throw them together once again.  For what
purpose?

Like a lightning flash the whole terrible truth seems to burst upon
her.  Suspicions, hints, all take new shape by the light of this new
discovery--her husband's long friendship for Lady Jean, his
indifference to herself.  But that he could have stooped so low as to
plan his wife's dishonour for the sake of his own freedom----  It
seems to her almost incredible.

The whole pitfall opened for her feet now confronts her fully and
clearly.  If Keith had accepted, if he had come here--she unconscious
of the invitation, and unable to oppose it once so accepted--what
then?

"Oh, my darling," she half sobs, "thank God you were brave and true
to your better self!  They may suspect our love, but, as there is a
Heaven above, they shall never shame it to their own baseness!"

She kneels by her bed in an agony of weeping.  Fear, shame, rage,
disgust, sweep over her by turns.  She sees the whole plot, and her
own long blindness, and yet she knows she is powerless to resent
either!  If her husband accuses her of loving Keith she cannot deny
it, and to explain to a mind so coarse and base the struggle and the
sufferings that love has cost her, would only bring down ridicule and
win her no belief.

She feels quite helpless.  Her enemy knows her secret, and her evil
mind will colour it and send it flying abroad, and she is powerless
to resent, or to deny.

A loathing, a horror of herself--of them--comes upon her.  It seems
to her scarcely possible that they could have sunk so low, could have
plotted anything so evil.  And then bitter thoughts come into her
mind.  Of what use to try and do right, to struggle, and sacrifice as
she has done?  Duty has brought to her only added shame, only a
crueller trial!

There is but one grain of comfort to her now in all her sorrow.  It
is that Keith has been brave and true to his word, that for _her_
sake he has forfeited self for once.

"Had he listened, had he come, he would have been a coward," she says
to herself, and then the thought of his danger, his weakness, comes
over her, and she weeps wildly and passionately in her loneliness.
She dares say no word of sympathy, dares show no sign; she, too, must
appear cold, unmoved, uncaring.

"Oh, dear Heaven!" she prays in her sorrow and her pain.  "Where will
it end--where will it end?  Will my strength endure for my life?"

She had never felt so helpless, so desperate as now.

She could not think of any course of action to pursue, and yet she
knew she could not overlook this outrage to herself.  That she should
have under her roof as guest a woman whose position with her own
husband she could no longer doubt, was impossible.  All her pride
rose in arms against such a possibility, and yet beyond all things
she dreaded to explain to Sir Francis her reasons, and hear his
hateful taunts and sneers against herself.

"And I am not blameless," she moans, pressing her hands against her
hot and throbbing temples.  "What can I say for myself?"  As she
kneels there, a knock comes at her door.  She rises hurriedly, and
opens it, and confronts--her husband.

He comes in.  He does not look at her.

"Lauraine," he begins, "I just wanted to say a word to you.  I have
heard some bad news of young Athelstone I wanted to tell you.  He has
been dangerously ill--is lying alone and friendless at an hotel in
Liverpool.  I wish you would write and ask him to come here as soon
as he can travel--it seems such a sad thing, you know."

He stops abruptly.  He has repeated his lesson, and feels a little
uncomfortable.

Lauraine lifts her head very proudly.  Her voice, as she speaks, goes
through him like the touch of ice.

"Has Lady Jean counselled you to say all this?  Her anxiety
and--yours, for Mr. Athelstone are really most praiseworthy.  All the
same, you have had _his_ answer to your disinterested invitation.  It
is scarcely necessary for me to repeat it, even if I wished."

He looks at her with a dark flush mounting to his brow, but flinches
beneath the steady challenge of her eyes.

"What do you mean?" he demands hoarsely.

"I was in the library half-an-hour ago," says Lauraine calmly.  "Only
for a moment--do not fancy I stooped to intentional eaves-dropping.
I think it is for you to say whether Lady Jean Salomans--or I--leave
your house immediately."




CHAPTER XXVIII

There is a moment's silence, then Sir Francis turns and confronts her
with a face of sullen rage.

"What the devil do you mean?" he says fiercely.  "Are you going to
insult her?"

"I think the insult is to me," says Lauraine, very quietly.  "I have
been blind a long time; but if you can discuss my actions with
another woman in the familiar manner I heard you discussing them with
Lady Jean, it says enough to convince me of the terms of your
acquaintanceship.  I have no desire for any open scandal.  You can
explain to your friend that her presence here is no longer desirable.
That is all."

"All!" scoffs Sir Francis savagely.  "And do you suppose I'm going to
be dictated to by you as to who stops in my house, or not?  A nice
model of virtue and propriety you are, to preach to other women!  A
beggar, who married me for my money, just as one of the vilest women
would have done--a woman who has been carrying on a secret intrigue
of her own for years, only is too devilish clever to be found out."

Lauraine stops him with a gesture of infinite scorn.  "What you say
is untrue.  That I married you without any pretence of love, you
know.  I make no secret of it, and my mother and yourself both tried
your utmost to persuade me into it.  But since I married you, I have
at least been true.  Secret intrigues, as you call them, are for
women of Lady Jean's stamp, not mine."

"And what about your own friendship for Keith?" sneers her husband.
"Do you deny he is your lover?"

"No," answers Lauraine, turning very white, but still keeping her
voice steady in its cold contempt.  "But his love is worthy of the
name; it is not a base, degrading passion that steeps itself in
deceit--that, holding one face to the world, has another for the
partner of its baseness.  Keith has loved me from his boyhood.  I was
faithless to him, in a way; but I was not wholly to blame.  For long
after we met again I never suspected but that the old love was dead
and buried.  When I found it was not----"  She stops abruptly, and a
sudden, angry light comes into her eyes.  "Why do I stop to explain?
You--you cannot even imagine what a pure, self-denying love may be
capable of!  I think you have had your answer in his letter.  He
knows better than to palter with temptation.  He has more respect for
me, than you who claim to be--my husband."

His eyes droop in momentary shame, but the rage in his heart is
boiling with fiercer fury.  "A fine thing for you to talk to me of
your love for another man--of his for you.  Pshaw! as if all men's
love is not alike.  Do you take me for a fool?  You never loved me,
and since your child died we have been almost strangers, and you have
had your lover with you often enough.  That he has not accepted this
invitation is to me no proof of what you call virtue.  Perhaps he is
tired of you.  It is likely."

All the blood seems to rush from Lauraine's heart to her face at this
insult.  She confronts him with a passion of indignation.  "How
_dare_ you?" she cries; and then something seems to rise in her
throat and choke her.  The utter futility of words--the sense of her
own imprudence--confront her like a barrier to the belief she would
invoke.  He sees he has stung her now almost beyond endurance, and
the knowledge rouses all that is worst in him, and prompts but
further outrage.  That his own wrong-doing is discovered, that
another woman has fallen where she--his wife--stood firm, are but
added incentives to his jealous fury and defeated ends.

"How _dare_ I?  You will find that I dare more than that, madam.  I
think you would not look much better than I if we had a 'show up,'
and as I live, if you insult Lady Jean I will institute proceedings
against you--with Keith Athelstone as co-respondent."

And he leaves the room with a brutal laugh.

Lauraine stands there as if turned to stone.  For the first time she
feels how powerless she is--how helpless is any woman when the man
who has sworn to protect and honour her, turns round on her and
insults her with the very weakness he is bound to respect.

She knows her husband is not faithful, that the very presence of this
woman beneath her roof is an outrage to all decency and morality, and
yet if she opposes that presence, she herself is threatened with a
life-long injury; nay, more, Keith will be dragged in to shield the
sharer of this flagrant guilt, which is before her very eyes, and
which she seems powerless to resent.  She grows desperate as she
thinks of it--as she looks at the case from every side, and yet sees
no way of escape or justice.

Of what use is innocence to a woman whose name is before the world,
and dragged through the mire of public inquiry?  A thousand tongues
will chatter, a thousand scandals fly, to be magnified and retailed
and charged with vile suspicions.  She will be a public sport, a
public shame.  And Lauraine knew that this would be her portion if
she did not agree to hide the guilt of another woman, and tacitly
accept the charge laid against herself.  As she thought of it, all
that was best and purest in her nature rose in revolt.  All the
courage and strength that had given her power to resist her lover,
seemed to array themselves against the brutal tyranny and shameful
outrage she had been bidden to accept.

"I will not do it; I _will_ not!" she cries aloud, as she paces to
and fro her room.  "After all I am rightly punished.  I was false to
him, and it was wrong to allow him to be so much with me, once I knew
he loved me still.  Now, whichever way I look at it, there seems
nothing but shame and dishonour."

It seemed to her right--nay, but common justice--that she should
suffer; but she hated to think of Keith being condemned to like
torture, of the shame that would be about his life, did her husband
carry out his threat.  Where, indeed, would the results of this fatal
love end?  To what depths of misery had it not led, and still seemed
to be leading them?

Divorce had always seemed to Lauraine a shameful thing--a necessary
evil sometimes, but still something with a stigma of disgrace, that,
whether merited or not, always dogged and haunted a woman all her
life.  And now she could plainly see to what end her husband and Lady
Jean were driving her as their scapegoat.

By her means they wished to vindicate themselves; and, remembering
how easily their plot might have been carried out, she shudders and
turns sick with loathing and shame unutterable.

Keith, in his weakness and loneliness, might have been enticed here
apparently by her wish.  There would have been hours of languor and
convalescence, during which they would have been together--hours when
the softness of pity in her own heart and the awakened memories of
his would have held all the old power, and all the long
fought-against danger.  But she sees still that the plot is not
defeated, that she has a subtle foe to combat, and in all her scorn
and wrath Lauraine yet feels the miserable conviction of her own
impotence oppressing her.

The hours pass.  Of time she takes no count or heed; only lies there
prostrate and sick at heart, and desolate, and ashamed; feeling that
a great crisis in her life has come, and she cannot tell how to deal
with it.

The luncheon-bell rings, but she sends a message that she is ill and
cannot come downstairs.  Another hour passes, and still she does not
move, only lies there in a sort of stupor of misery and bewilderment.

There comes a gentle knock at the door, and she hears Lady Etwynde's
voice asking permission to enter.

Wearily enough she gives it.  All sympathy seems useless to her, and
her friend's perfect happiness seems to show up in but sharper
contrast her own wretched life.  Lady Etwynde guesses instinctively
that something is wrong.  Neither Lady Jean nor Lauraine has appeared
at luncheon, and Sir Francis has looked like a human thundercloud all
the time.  She comes forward now and kneels by Lauraine's side.

"What has happened, dear?" she asks.  "Are you ill?"

"Ill enough in mind," answers Lauraine, and then she tells her all.
Lady Etwynde listens in silence, but her beautiful eyes grow dark
with indignation and scorn.

"It is all that hateful woman, of course," she says at last.  "Oh, my
dear, my dear, what will you do now?"

"I cannot tell," says Lauraine despairingly.  "Accept such an outrage
as this, I cannot, and yet if I insist--well, I told you his threat."

"But that is absurd!" exclaims Lady Etwynde indignantly.  "He has not
a shadow of proof.  No judge would listen to such a case.  It is only
a threat, Lauraine; and that woman has put him up to it."

"But in any case the disgrace would be the same," says Lauraine.  "I
was so blind, so foolish.  Every one seems to have noticed Keith's
devotion to me, and I--it was so long before I suspected it."

"The lookers-on always see most, you know.  But still all this proves
nothing, and I don't believe your husband would seriously think of
dragging his name and yours into one of those courts without a tittle
of evidence to support his accusation."

"Evidence can be bought," says Lauraine; "and even were it to come to
nothing, there is the shame, the scandal.  Oh, my poor Keith!  It was
an evil fate that threw us two together again."

For a moment Lady Etwynde is silent.  She is deeply troubled.  She
knows well enough that, be a woman ever so innocent, the breath of
public discussion will tarnish her fame for ever,  A sense of
injustice, of anger, rises in her heart, and fills it with hot,
indignant thoughts.

"I cannot counsel you to submit," she says.

"I do not mean to submit," answers Lauraine tranquilly.  "It would
look like fear.  I must face the worst.  For myself, I do not care so
much; I have been unhappy so long--but it is of Keith I think."

"My dear!" exclaims Lady Etwynde, "spare your pity!  A man never
suffers in these cases; it is always the woman--always.  The more
guiltless, the more society will shun her.  It is a sort of way it
has for condoning its own errors and impurities.  It looks well to
make a violent outcry when any one has been so foolish as to be found
out.  As long as you sin in the dark, no one will dream of saying a
word, let their suspicions be ever so strong.  A woman like you,
Lauraine, who has only been imprudent and sorely tempted, and yet
dares to be virtuous, will receive no mercy and gain no belief."

"I know that," she says, and her indifference is scarcely forced now.
She feels too hopeless for strong emotion.

"As for Keith," goes on Lady Etwynde impatiently, "it is all owing to
his selfishness and----"

"Hush!" cries Lauraine sternly.  "I will not have him blamed.  He has
been sorely tried, and many men would have acted far worse.  It is on
me that all the blame lies--on me only.  It all began from the fatal
error of my marriage, and I deserve to suffer, I know; only
sometimes, Etwynde," she adds wearily, "it does seem as if the
suffering was beyond my strength."

The tears spring to Lady Etwynde's eyes.

"What _will_ you do?" she asks despairingly.

"To-morrow I will tell Lady Jean that it is best for her visit to
terminate," answers Lauraine.  "I do not see why I should condone my
own shame.  As for the consequences, Sir Francis must do what he
pleases.  I know I am innocent, even if blameable--the result, time
will show."

"I think you are quite right," says Lady Etwynde.  "But I am afraid
you will suffer for it.  Lady Jean is a dangerous woman to offend."

Lauraine pushes the hair off her temples as if the weight oppressed
her.  "I do not expect anything else but suffering now.  And I may as
well endure it for right as for wrong.  If I have respected my
husband's name, at least he might respect mine."

"And whatever you do be sure of this," says Lady Etwynde gently: "my
house is always open to you.  Let the whole world turn its back upon
you, Lauraine, my friendship will never fail."  Lauraine looks up at
the beautiful face.  Her heart is too full for words.

But when she is alone again a great fear chills her.  "I have done
right," she says.  "But--what will it cost?"




CHAPTER XXIX

All through that day Lauraine keeps in her own room.  Sir Francis
does not approach her.  He is quite confident that his threat has
taken effect--that she will never proceed to extremities.  He has not
seen Lady Jean to tell her of his wife's discovery, and he dares not
send her another message.  When he goes down to dinner he finds his
wife in the drawing-room.  She looks very pale, and is dressed in
black velvet.  Lady Etwynde is beside her, and Colonel Carlisle is
standing near.

Sir Francis has scarcely entered the room when Lady Jean follows.
She and Lauraine have not met that day.  She walks up to her hostess,
extending her hand.

Lauraine draws her slender figure up to its full height, and, with a
cold bow, turns aside to speak to Colonel Carlisle.  For an instant
Lady Jean looks at her as if stunned.  Then the blood rushes in a
torrent to her face and neck.  She knows the meaning of such an
action only too well.  Dinner is announced now, and Sir Francis, who
has also observed this act of his wife's, offers his arm to Lady
Jean.  Colonel Carlisle does the same to Lauraine, and Lady Etwynde
follows.

The dinner is a dreary affair.  Each of them feels a scene is
impending, and Colonel Carlisle, who has some inkling of how matters
stand, is very uncomfortable.  He resolves that on the morrow Etwynde
and himself must quit Falcon's Chase, sorry as he is for, and much as
he admires, Lauraine.  The ladies rise to leave the table, and pass
out of the room.  Before entering the drawing-room Lady Jean bends
down to Lauraine.

"Will you be good enough to explain the meaning of your strange
behaviour?" she says.

Lauraine turns and faces her unflinchingly.  "You must excuse me from
entering upon any discussion with you," she says haughtily.  "You
will find a note in your own apartment that will fully explain
everything--not that I fancy such explanation is needed."

Lady Jean's handsome, sparkling face changes to a dull, ashy grey.
She to be insulted thus, to her face, and by a woman whom she
despises and hates as a rival!  Her teeth clench like a vice.  She is
too wise to bandy words; she only turns and walks straight to her own
suite of rooms, and there sees the letter spoken of.  Tearing it open
like a fury, she reads the few curt lines in which Lauraine states
that circumstances render it advisable her visit should come to an
end, and refers her, for any explanation she may deem necessary, to
Sir Francis.

To say that Lady Jean is furious would but ill convey an idea of the
tempest of rage, hatred, and spite aroused in her heart by the
knowledge that she is discovered.

"How could she have found out, and so suddenly?" she mutters to
herself.  "He had no letters of mine to leave about.  I was never
such a fool as to write to him, and to-day she has been shut up in
her rooms, and I have not met Frank.  Ah, the library--I forgot that.
Good heavens! could she have overheard?"

She trembles with mingled rage and shame.  If Lauraine had stood
before her now she could have killed her without a regret, crushed
out her youth and beauty with ruthless hands and rejoicing heart; but
Lauraine is not there, and Lauraine has all the triumph, and she all
the shame and defeat.  Like a wounded tigress she paces to and fro
her room, a thousand schemes and projects flashing through her brain,
and all the fierceness and savagery of her nature roused into an
insensate, furious longing to revenge this insult, as she terms it,
upon the woman who has dealt it to her.

And at this moment, and while she is in this mood, Sir Francis enters.

Lady Jean turns upon him like a beautiful fury.  "So--you have been
fool enough to let her find out," she says, in a low, choked voice.
"Read that."

He glances over his wife's letter.  He is enraged also.  He had not
thought she would have courage to act like this.  "By Heaven! she
shall suffer for it!" he mutters savagely.  "She has dared to defy
me, after all!"

"Defy you?" echoes Lady Jean.  "Did you know then?"

"Certainly; I knew since the morning," he answers.  "She was in the
library--she heard us."

"Did I not tell you, you were an imbecile," screams Lady Jean, "to
send me a message--to ask me to come to that room; and now--now--
Great Heaven! what am I to do?  I am ruined, and all through your
idiocy?"

A woman always turns round on a man when there is a question of
inconvenience to herself.  Sir Francis stands there sullen and
raging, but he is equally at a loss what to counsel.  "I am master
here," he says presently.  "You shall not go."

Lady Jean laughs in his face.  "Master here?--oh, no doubt!  You
should have exercised your mastership in time, then; now it is too
late.  Your wife and I cannot remain under the same roof.  Why, do
you suppose that for a single moment I should stay to put up with her
insults?  Are you really such a fool?  No; it is good-bye to you both
from to-night, only don't let her _dare_ to breathe a word of this to
the world, or it will be the very worst day of her life--that I
swear!"

"Good-bye!--what do you mean?" says sir Francis stupidly.  "Do you
think I am going to give you up for that puling, white-faced piece of
virtue who calls herself my wife?  By Heaven, no!"

"You seem to forget that you were mad to have that same puling,
white-faced nonentity for your wife once upon a time!" sneers Lady
Jean.  "You bought your toy, and now must keep it.  I leave your roof
to-morrow, and never again do we two meet, unless----"

She pauses meaningly.  He seizes her by the arm.

"Don't drive me desperate.  You know I cannot give you up.  You shall
not--must not go.  I have a hold on Lauraine.  She is afraid.  There
is all that about--Keith."

Lady Jean shakes off his hand and laughs mockingly.  "About Keith!
Pshaw!  They were too wise for us, _mon ami_.  Don't fancy you can do
anything there.  Of course they were in love--every one knows that;
but I doubt if you have a handle for a 'case,' if that is what you
mean.  And if Lauraine were afraid of you, would she have
written--this?"

She stands before him--that letter in her hand, and all that is worst
in her whole nature roused and stung by the justice that she deems an
insult.  Sir Francis is quite at a loss.  That Lauraine has so coolly
disregarded his threats seems to augur her own fearlessness and her
own innocence.  He feels an involuntary respect for her despite his
anger and the fury of baffled schemes.  It had never occurred to him
that she would be brave enough to act thus.  She has openly defied
him, and that defiance rouses in him a longing for vengeance--a
hatred of the purity of principle that has been tempted and yet stood
firm--that in the weakness of a woman's nature had been strong as
never was his manhood; that confronts him now unshamed and undaunted,
and ready to bear the cost of the most terrible vengeance that could
present itself to a woman of Lauraine's nature.

"Would she?" persists Lady Jean, enraged at his silence.
"Afraid!--she is fearless enough, trust her.  She has been too clever
for us both, and there remains nothing for it but to make the best of
it.  I will have no scene, no scandal.  I leave your house to-morrow,
and never again do I set foot in it, or receive you."

"And you think I will suffer this?" cries Sir Francis.  "That I am
going to part from a woman I love for the sake of one I hate?"

"I think you cannot help yourself," answers Lady Jean coolly.  "I
mean what I have said.  Now--go.  I don't want to create further
scandal, and your presence here at this time is somewhat singular, to
say the least."

"Jean, do not drive me mad!" cried Sir Francis desperately.  "You are
clever, keen of wit.  Surely you can devise some plan by which we can
defeat her?  It is humiliating, unbearable to be baffled like this."

"She has seen through our scheme; she is prepared," scoffs Lady Jean.
"Don't praise me for keen wits or cleverness, _mon ami_; you can
admire them more safely as exemplified by your wife!  Now--will you
go?"

"Not unless you tell me when I am to see you again."

"Never, never, never!" almost screams Lady Jean.  "Is that enough?
_Never again_, I swear, unless your wife is--to all intents and
appearances--what she has deemed me!  As that will never be, I think
you must resign yourself as philosophically as possible to an eternal
parting."

"How heartless you are!" cries Sir Francis.  "You cannot mean it.  We
might meet sometimes.  There is no kind of----"

"Oh, fool--dolt!" cries Lady Jean, in a fury.  "Have I not said
enough?  It is to you I owe this insult.  You can pay the penalty of
it.  You have nothing to do now but put up with your bargain,
or--wait for freedom!"

"Freedom," he mutters, vaguely and stupidly.  "Do you mean that I
should try for a divorce?"

She opens the door and pushes him aside.  "I have said all that is
necessary.  It is for you to act!"

"Act," he says.  For a moment he hesitates, then goes forward and
firmly closes the door.  "I will _not_ go till I have said my say.  I
warned Lauraine that if she did this I would proceed to extremities.
I shall do so.  She has defied me for the first time in her life.
Well, she shall suffer for it.  If you leave my roof she leaves it
too.  She has chosen to insult you; let her have her share of the
disgrace."

Lady Jean looks at him as if bewildered.

"I think you know very well what I mean," he says gloomily.  "You
were the first to counsel it."

"But the scandal, the disgrace," cries Lady Jean hurriedly.  "And
then all this will leak out, and it will look like a trumped-up case,
done to shield yourself.  And my name----  No, no, I cannot have it.
She is right.  Let her have her triumph; it won't last long.  There
are other ways to punish her besides this.  Leave it to me.  I must
be calm.  I must think.  No; _that_ idea is ridiculous.  You may drag
her name through the dirt, but you drag your own also, and she can
always bring up--this.  And, though I hate her, I know she is a good
woman.  She is cold; that is her safeguard, for she never loved you.
But all the same she will not forfeit her own self-respect.  It is
only another sort of pride, but it is _safe_."

"And yet you always said--" begins Sir Francis.

"Said," and she laughs her old mocking laugh.  "Of course I _said_,
of course I say it still; but then proofs are different.  She loves
Keith Athelstone, and he loves her; and you--love me.  It is a
triangle that you can't make into a square.  She has the best of it
now.  Let her alone, and let her triumph.  It may be my turn next."

Infatuated as Sir Francis is, something in the cold, measured hatred
of this woman's last words strikes upon him with a chill almost of
fear.  He would rather have seen her furious, violent, tempestuous,
than as she looked now.  She was not the sort of woman to care for a
"waiting race," and he knew some deeper purpose underlaid her words.
She turns on him suddenly again, and stamps her foot.  "_Will_ you
go?  Do you wish to disgrace me publicly?  Have I not suffered enough
at your hands?"

"But you will write; you will tell me where you are?" he implores.

"Yes--yes; I will write.  Only go.  I must be alone; I must think.
And to-morrow I leave.  Arrange all that."  He leaves her then, and
Lady Jean rings her bell and bids her maid pack immediately; she has
received news that necessitates her return to Paris.

Early next morning she leaves the Chase.

Her hostess does not appear, or send any message of farewell.  Sir
Francis drives his guest away to the station.  He has not seen or
spoken to his wife.

"You have triumphed," says Lady Etwynde, standing by Lauraine's side,
and watching the carriage as it disappears down the great oak avenue.

"Triumphed?"  Lauraine sighs heavily as she turns her aching eyes
away from the dark forest glades that stretch for miles around.  "It
is a poor triumph, Etwynde, and laden with bitter memories, and
weighted with many fears.  Something tells me that I shall suffer for
this before long."  And Lady Etwynde echoes that fear in her own
heart, though now she speaks all brave and cheering words that her
tender love can frame.

"How will it end?" she thinks despairingly.  "How will it end?"
Perhaps it was well that she could not tell at that hour, in that
time.




CHAPTER XXX

"Why does Lauraine not come to town?" says Mrs. Douglas, impatiently,
to Lady Etwynde.  "She must be moped to death in that dreary
Northumberland place.  It gives me the horrors even to think of it."

It is a cold afternoon in February, and it is Lady Etwynde's "day,"
but the æsthetes are deserting her now.  Her marriage is fixed for
the end of the month.  It is to be very quiet, and Lauraine has
written to say she cannot come to it; her health is so delicate, that
all excitement and fatigue are forbidden.  But the real truth is,
that Sir Francis has developed a new system of tyranny, framed in by
every species of insulting suspicion, and has ordered Lauraine to
remain at Falcon's Chase, and declared she shall not even go up to
London for the season.  It is childish, it is cowardly, and it is
unreasonable, and he knows it is all these; but he is infuriated with
her, and savage at the failure of his schemes, and this is the only
sort of revenge that he can think of at present.  He himself is in
Paris, with all the gaieties and amusements of the season awaiting
his selection, but chafing inwardly and fiercely at Lady Jean's
strange conduct, and complete avoidance of himself.

Of course she goes nowhere--her deep mourning compels retirement--but
she has a small circle of friends who come to her afternoons in her
pretty rooms in the Rue Victoire, and Sir Francis knows this, and
knows that he is always excluded, and the fact makes him more
irritable, more bitter against his wife, and more impatient of seeing
his mistress than he has ever been since they parted at the Chase.
"How long am I to wait?" he wonders impatiently.  "What can be her
meaning?"

As yet neither of these questions seemed destined to be answered.

"I know there is something," persists Mrs. Douglas, drawing near to
the fire in the pretty artistic drawing-room, and dropping her voice
confidentially.  "It looks so odd, and Sir Francis is never with her
now.  Do tell me, Lady Etwynde, was there anything--anything
wrong--when you were down there at Christmas?"

"I think Lauraine is most unhappy," says Lady Etwynde sorrowfully;
"and I think her marriage was a great mistake.  I often heard you
congratulating yourself and her--on its brilliance, Mrs. Douglas; but
I think, could you see behind the scenes and look into your
daughter's breaking heart, you would not feel quite so proud, or so
satisfied respecting it."

Mrs. Douglas looks at her annoyed and impatient.

"If she is unhappy it must be her own fault.  She had everything that
could make a woman happy, and her husband was devoted to her.  If she
has lost his affection, it is by her own imprudence and folly.  I
warned her long ago how it would be."

"Perhaps your warning came too late.  Most warnings do," says Lady
Etwynde coldly.  "But a loveless marriage to a girl of Lauraine's
disposition and nature was a dangerous experiment.  You ought to have
let her marry Keith Athelstone."

Mrs. Douglas' eyes flash angrily.  "I suppose you are in her
confidence.  I acted for the best.  Keith was always wild and rash,
and not at all a suitable match; and, besides that, she was not in
love with him--or, at least, never told me so.  She was quite content
to marry Sir Francis."

"She could have known nothing of his reputation, then," answers Lady
Etwynde.  "He was always a bad, fast man; and he has treated Lauraine
abominably."

Mrs. Douglas looks at her with increased curiosity.  "What has he
done?  Is it about--Lady Jean?"

"Yes," answers Lady Etwynde, colouring.  "Lauraine knows now what the
world has long suspected; and when she would not allow that woman to
remain under her roof, Sir Francis threatened her with proceedings
and dragged in poor Keith Athelstone's name."

"Good Heavens!" exclaims Mrs. Douglas, "what scandal--what horror!
Oh, surely he is not in earnest?  Why, Lauraine is a fool--a perfect
fool!  Why did she make a scene about it?  Of course, every one knows
such things happen constantly.  Men are never faithful--never!  But
to insult the woman--and for what good?  To think that a daughter of
mine should have been such an idiot?"

"It does seem remarkable, doesn't it?" says Lady Etwynde dryly.  "You
see women nowadays generally prefer worldly advantage to their own
self-respect."

"Self-respect!  Fiddlesticks!" cries Mrs. Douglas, growing more and
more irate.  "Will self-respect give her her present position, or
gain the world's belief in her innocence if she is once in the
Divorce Court?  Self-respect!  I hate such rubbish.  She had
everything she wanted; why could she not have been content?"

"I dare say you would never understand why," answers Lady Etwynde
calmly.  "Lauraine is singularly unlike yourself."

"Lauraine is a fool--a perfect fool!" cries Mrs. Douglas furiously.
"To get herself into a scrape like this, and all for nothing; to
insult a woman of Lady Jean's position, and then to get herself
talked about as she's done with that young idiot Keith, and simply
because of some childish folly long ago, when they fancied themselves
in love with each other!  Why, she must have taken leave of her
senses, and all this time she has not said a word to me--her own
mother!"

Lady Etwynde is silent.  She is thinking it would have been stranger
still if Lauraine _had_ taken her mother into her confidence.

"I am sure Sir Francis was always most kind to her," resumes Mrs.
Douglas presently.  "Always when I have seen them together."

"I believe it is not a rule in good society for husband and wife to
quarrel openly," remarks Lady Etwynde.

"She should have been content and sensible like other people," goes
on Mrs. Douglas, disregarding the interruption.  "Good gracious,
every one knows such things go on.  You can't make saints of men.
You must take them as they are.  And did she actually make Lady Jean
leave the house?"

"She would have been scarcely less guilty than Lady Jean had she
condoned her presence, knowing what she knew," says Lady Etwynde,
with rising indignation.  "Even if a husband does not love his wife,
he at least should treat her with common decency."

"I daresay Lauraine brought it all on herself.  A man can't always
put up with such airs as those to which she treated Sir Francis, and,
in contrast with Lady Jean, why Lauraine was--nothing."

"No," agrees Lady Etwynde.  "A good woman and pure-minded generally
looks colourless and tame beside a wicked one.  The contrast is too
strong I suppose."

Mrs. Douglas looks at her sharply.  She does not like her tone, nor
understand it.

"Well, I only hope it will come right," she says.  "I shall write to
Lauraine and advise her to make it up with her husband.  It is so
stupid, making a fuss and _exposé_--losing everything, and all
for--what?"

"I think," says Lady Etwynde quietly, "that you do not understand
your daughter, and you do her injustice.  A woman must know when to
support her own dignity; I suppose you allow that?"

"I daresay Lauraine made a great deal of unnecessary fuss; it would
be just like her.  She is full of romance and high-flown ideas.  If
she had been quite circumspect herself it would not matter; but after
getting herself talked about with Keith--I myself had to warn her--I
think Sir Francis was very good to overlook it."

"Sir Francis perhaps had his own aims to attain," interpolates Lady
Etwynde.  "I am inclined to think so, judging by results."

"Do you mean--do you really think he wishes for freedom?" gasps Mrs.
Douglas.  "Is it so bad as that?"

"Lady Jean seems to have infatuated him," answers Lady Etwynde.  "He
was always weak where women were concerned, you know.  He has treated
Lauraine very badly and he is even now in Paris."

"I think I will go down to Falcon's Chase," says Mrs. Douglas
presently.  "I must see Lauraine and advise her.  It is really most
critical.  I had no idea things were so bad.  She has not chosen to
take me into her confidence; still, as her mother, it is my duty to
see she does not ruin her whole future."

"I think," says Lady Etwynde, very quietly, "I would not go if I were
you."

"Why not?" demands Mrs. Douglas sharply.

"She might not like it," answers Lady Etwynde; "and you can do no
good--no one can.  Lauraine is proud, but she is also
high-principled.  I do not think you need fear for her.  What is
right to do she will do, at any cost.  Sir Francis has not carried
out his threat, and I fancy he won't.  He has ordered Lauraine to
remain in Northumberland; but I do not think that is any great
punishment to her.  She always loved the Chase, and all her memories
of her child are with it."

"It is a pity the child died," says Mrs. Douglas.

"You may well say that.  He would at least have been some consolation
to her now.  Not that it would have made any difference to Sir
Francis.  He never cared for the boy.  Still it was a tie."

"Lauraine must have been in fault," complains Mrs. Douglas fretfully.
"It is all nonsense to say she is a martyr--Sir Francis was no worse
than other men.  If she had been less cold, less odd, he would never
have run after other women."

"I do not agree with you," interrupts Lady Etwynde.  "Sir Francis is
just what he always was--a thoroughly selfish man, and a man whose
habits are ingrained in every fibre of his nature.  He has never
treated women with any respect, and his passion for Lauraine was as
short-lived as any of his other fancies.  He married her
because--well, you know the real reason as well as you know the man,
and in two years he was tired of her.  For a woman, young, beautiful,
warm-hearted, she has had a most trying life, and a most cruel
experience.  Had she indeed been what hundreds of others are, she
might have consoled herself easily enough; but she could not do that,
and--she has her reward."

Mrs. Douglas is silent and uncomfortable.  "It is a great pity," she
says at last.  "A great pity.  And one can really do nothing?"

"Nothing, except wait and hope."

Then the door opens and Colonel Carlisle enters, and a beautiful
flush and light come over her face as she greets him.  Mrs. Douglas
looks at her radiant eyes and sees his proud and tender glance, and
hears the happy ring in their answering voices, and as she goes out
and leaves them alone a little uncomfortable feeling rises in her
heart.  "Is there something in love, after all?" she asks herself.


"What has that woman been saying?" asks Colonel Carlisle, as the door
closes and he seats himself by his betrothed.  "You looked worried
when I came in."

"She always does worry me, I think," says Lady Etwynde, nestling
closer to his side, as the strong arm draws her towards him.  "She is
so worldly, so cold, so heartless; and I hate to hear a mother speak
of her daughter as she speaks of Lauraine."

"They seem totally unlike each other," says the Colonel.  "Poor
Lauraine!  Have you any news?"

"I had a letter this morning.  She cannot come up for our marriage.
Of course, Sir Francis won't let her--that is the real truth.  It is
a little bit of spite on his part."

"What an unfortunate marriage that was!" exclaims Colonel Carlisle
involuntarily.  "Ah, my darling, thank God that we shall have love
and sympathy on which to base ours.  There is no hell upon earth like
a union where there is no love, no respect, no single thought or
feeling shared in common--where one's nature revolts and one's duty
demands submission--where the sacredness of home is violated every
hour until the name becomes a mockery----"

"Poor Lauraine!--what she has missed!" Lady Etwynde sighs.

"She had not your constancy, my darling!" murmurs her lover.  "To
think that for all these years you held me shrined in the proud
little heart that I thought so cold and unforgiving once!  How true a
love was yours!"

"It had need to be true if it was so unforgiving," she says, smiling
up into the dark eyes that search her own.  "When I think of those
long, wasted years----"

"Do not think of them," he interrupts passionately, "or think of them
only to crowd into those that are to come, a double portion of the
love they have missed."

And with his lips on hers she is content, indeed, that it should be
so.




CHAPTER XXXI

Alone in her rooms in Paris, Lady Jean sits perplexing herself over
ways and means.  She is awfully in debt, even though she has let the
country-house, and supplemented her income by another five hundred a
year.  She is angry with herself for having refused Sir Francis'
assistance and too proud to call him to her side.  She can think of
no scheme by which to baffle Lauraine, and though she knows her rival
is condemned to a species of exile, and that she is as unhappy as a
woman can well be, that in no way comforts her for the fact of her
own defeat.

Her position is full of peril and uncertainty.  She can no longer
float on the smooth waters of Society, for Society is shocked and
outraged by her husband's misdeeds, and an ill odour clings to her
name.  The people she gathers round her now are not at all the class
of people she prefers.  Needy foreigners, second-rate celebrities;
Englishmen with shady reputations and tarnished titles; French
Bohemians who have known and admired her in the days of her
success--all these congregate together at her little rooms in the Rue
Victoire; and among them all she looks for some willing tool who will
lend himself to her hand and work out her schemes.

But for long she looks in vain.

The winter passes on.  The cool, fresh days of early spring are
heralded by bursts of sunshine, by the tender budding leafage of the
Boulevards, by the scents and hues of flowers that are piled up in
the baskets of the market women, and fill the windows of the
_fleuristes_ with brilliance and beauty once again.  And in the
springtime, suddenly and without warning, Lady Jean's scheme of
vengeance comes to her as a vision of possibility at last, for who
should come to Paris but Keith Athelstone.

He has been wintering in the south of France.  He comes to the gay
city with no set purpose, or desire.  He is alone, and melancholy,
and depressed.  He thinks he will have a fortnight in Paris, and then
start for that long-projected American tour, and the first person he
sees and greets in Paris is the Lady Jean.

She has never been a favourite of his, and he is inclined to be curt
and avoid her.  But she had other schemes in her head, and, unless a
man is absolutely discourteous, it is not easy for him to baffle a
woman who has set her mind upon deluding him, especially a woman
clever and keen as the Lady Jean.

She is very quiet, very subdued.  All the fastness and wildness seem
to have evaporated.  She tells him of her bereavement, her troubles.
She speaks sympathizingly of his own, and brings in Lauraine's name
so gently and gradually that he cannot take alarm at it.  In the end
he accepts an invitation to her house.  And finds everything so
subdued, so decorous, in such perfect good taste, that he thinks Lady
Jean's widowhood has produced most salutary effects.

In his present mood gaiety and fastness would have jarred upon, and
disgusted him.  As it is, all is toned down, chastened, soothing, and
in perfect taste.  He comes again, and yet again.  Lady Jean keeps
the foreigners, and shady adventurers, and the Bohemian element
carefully out of his sight, and she herself treats him with that
consideration and deference always flattering to a young man's
feeling when displayed by a woman older than himself, and still
beautiful.  She mentions the Vavasours casually, Lauraine as being
immersed in worldly gaieties.  Sir Francis as being abroad at Monte
Carlo.  The latter fact is true, he having proceeded there in disgust
at her obstinacy and coldness, and yet not liking to break with her
entirely, because she happens to be the only woman of whom he has
never tired.

The fortnight passes, and Keith still lingers.  Life has no special
object for him at present.  The spring has turned cold and bleak, and
the American tour may await his own convenience.

One evening he comes to Lady Jean by special invitation.  There are a
few people there; there is a little music, and a little "play," not
very high, not very alarming; but Keith refuses it for a reason that
no one there guesses.  Play had been a passion with him once.  Its
dangerous excitement had lured him into the most terrible scrape of
that "wild youth" to which Mrs. Douglas is so fond of alluding.  Once
free of that early trouble, he had solemnly promised Lauraine never
to touch card or dice again, and he has kept his word.  Lady Jean
does not press him, though she looks surprised at his refusal.  She
sits with him in a dim corner of the room, and lures him on to talk
to her as he has done of late.

Watching them with anger and suspicion are two fierce eyes, the eyes
of a certain Count Karolyski, of whom no one knows anything except
that he is a Hungarian, an expert card player, and a deadly shot.

The count is a devoted admirer of the Lady Jean's.  The Count has
been first in favour with her for months past, and the Count looks
with extreme wrath on this young stripling who appears to have
supplanted him, and who is so serenely unconscious of the fact.

The refusal to play irritates him still more.  He knows Keith is very
rich, and had hoped to revenge his wounded feelings by fleecing him
with ease.  Keith has frustrated this agreeable project and that fact
rankles in the Count's breast, beneath the expanse of white linen and
glittering orders that adorn it so lavishly.  The evening goes on.
Wine is handed round and freely drunk.  A little more noise and
freedom than usual pervade the pretty, gilded rooms.  Lady Jean gets
somewhat uneasy.  She contrives to get rid of Keith; it does not suit
her purpose that he should think of her as anything but highly
decorous.  When he leaves and she comes back, Count Karolyski throws
down his cards, declaring he is tired of play, and comes over to her
side.

"You are cruel, madame," he says in French.  "You have deserted us
the whole evening."

She throws herself back in her chair with a little laugh.  "Cruel!
You had better amusement than my company."

"Amusement!  It is not that," he says, with an ardent glance from his
dark, flashing eyes.  "You are cold--fickle.  You are breaking my
heart for the sake of that American boy."

She interrupts him with pretended indignation.  "Count, you forget
yourself!  I permit no one to arraign my actions."

"Far be it from me to do that.  I would not offend you for worlds,
madame; but I cannot refrain from expressing my feelings when I see
your old friends thrust aside and forgotten, for sake of a beardless
youth to whom Fortune has been kinder than to us."

"I do not forget my friends," says Lady Jean, with a quick glance;
"and I am only civil to this boy because he is friendless and alone,
and I took pity on his solitude."

"Your pity, madame, may be a dangerous favour.  To those whom you
really compassionate, exclusion would be the greater mercy."

"Every one is not as foolish as yourself, Count," she says with a
soft glance.

It is pleasant to hear she is still beautiful--still can play the
part of an "apple of discord" to men.

"Because, perhaps, 'every one' has not found your presence what I
have found it."

"Hush!" she says softly; "you are talking folly, and you know it.
The days are over when I believed in compliments."

"You do not suppose I am insulting you by anything so commonplace?
Compliment is the language of fools and flatterers.  I am speaking
the plain unvarnished truth."

"Truth!" and she laughs lightly; "who speaks the truth now?  It is as
old-fashioned a virtue as honesty."

"Unless one finds it impossible to act indifference."

"Come, Count," she says good-humouredly, "we know each other too well
to talk in this strain.  We are all _bons camarades_ here; no
sentiment, and no seriousness.  I gave you credit for more sense than
to fear you would break through the rule."

His brows contract with a sudden angry frown.

"You do not mean what you say!  A woman like yourself cannot set
bounds to a man's admiration, or check his feelings by ridicule.  I
have scoffed at sentiment all my life as a thing fit only for boys
and women.  But all that I have hitherto disdained has amply revenged
my past indifference.  And you--you have not discouraged me, madame?"

Her heart beats high.  A sudden warm colour comes into her face
beneath its delicate rouge; but not from any gratification at the
homage--not for any reason that makes him interpret these signs as
flattering to himself.  Only because she sees herself a step further
on the road of her vengeance--only because triumph whispers to her
that the end is not far off.

She rises after those last words, laughing still.  "I do not believe
in love, monsieur, any more than yourself.  No one has been able to
convert me.  To parody an old saying, with me it is only a case of
'_La reine s'amuse_.'"

"And is this boy only a plaything also?" he says, with an angry sneer.

"Of course.  Is he not a charming one?" she says with sudden gravity.
"So earnest and credulous; quite refreshing.  We have so long passed
that stage of life, _nous autres_."

"With women like yourself for teachers is that a matter of wonder,
madame?"

"Now you are sarcastic, and that is horrid.  Why, Count, I do believe
you are jealous of my pretty boy!  I thought you were wiser than
that."

And laughing her soft, amused laughter, she passes on into the
card-room, leaving him standing there with the mellow lamplight on
his dark, passionate face, and shining in the lurid depths of his
eyes.  At that moment he hates her and himself, and hates tenfold
more the man he has chosen to consider as his rival.

It had been true, as he had said, that he had deemed himself above
all such weaknesses, until the fascination of this woman had entered
into his life and fired his soul with a passion, sudden, wild,
fierce, and absorbing even as it was revengeful.  To win her he would
have done much.  He was not a poor man, though far from being rich,
as Lady Jean counted riches.  Still he was of good birth, and boasted
of pure Magyar descent, and had noble and ancient estates in Hungary,
and thought himself no ill match for the daughter of a poor Irish
Earl.  But that Lady Jean should encourage his homage and then
ridicule it, filled him with fierce anger.

He leaves her room that night with a cold farewell, and for two days
does not approach her at all.

Lady Jean is amused.  It is what she expected, and she does not
resent it.  She sees Keith daily now--in fact, takes care that she
shall see him, for she is not desirous that he should escape her
toils.

Against his judgment, against his better reason, Keith Athelstone
submits to her caprices and permits her to draw him to her presence.
He is unfortunately in that state of mind in which a man is easily
influenced by a woman if she is sympathetic, friendly, and appears
interested in him.  At present nothing seems of much consequence or
account.  The fierce suffering of the last two years has been lulled
into a sort of quiescence.  The good resolutions formed during that
period of languor and convalescence have taken just sufficient root
to strengthen him as far as Lauraine is concerned, and with that
self-sacrifice they end.

Life looks very monotonous, very dreary at present, and there is just
a little fillip given to its monotony by Lady Jean.  It is not that
he likes her--it is not that he respects her, but he drifts into a
sort of intimacy before he really knows it, and she is always at hand
to sustain her influence.  And it so happens that all this comes to
the ears of Lauraine, filtered through the letters of mutual friends,
put in as spice to various gossip detailed to her from Paris.

At first she cannot believe it.  It seems too horrible; but
unfortunately a letter comes from Lady Etwynde, radiant in the flush
and glory of her matronly honours, and revelling in Paris delights
with her handsome husband; and that letter mentions casually the same
thing.  "Keith Athelstone has been driving in the Bois with Lady
Jean;" "I have met Keith, and asked him to dinner, but he excused
himself on the plea of a previous engagement with Lady Jean," etc.,
etc.

Lady Etwynde tells her this, thinking it may really keep her from
brooding over the idea that she has ruined her young lover's life;
but had she known the torture it would have inflicted, she would have
been silent on the subject.

Lady Etwynde's idea of Keith Athelstone has always been that he is
selfish and inconsiderate, and that Lauraine is quite thrown away
upon him; she feels convinced now of her own sagacity when she sees
how foolish is his conduct.  She herself takes no notice of Lady
Jean, and when Keith excuses himself to her on the plea before
mentioned, she feels disgusted and annoyed, and tells her husband she
will have nothing more to say to the young man.  She would have been
civil to him for Lauraine's sake, but if he prefers Lady Jean, why to
Lady Jean let him go.

"I knew he would never be constant," she says complainingly.
"Really, men are too horrible."

"With one exception," smiles Colonel Carlisle, looking proudly at the
bright, petulant face, that seems to have regained all its old
sparkling witchery and youthfulness with the "old" happiness.

"Ah, Cyril, there is no one like you!" she answers.

"My darling," he says.  "Every woman says that of the man she loves,
and every man of the woman.  I think you are hard upon poor Keith.
Fancy, to love a woman with all one's heart and soul, and know she
can be nothing to one.  Ah heaven! how fatal a thing is marriage
sometimes--how _sure_ one ought to be of oneself before entering into
a life-long union."

"_We_ are sure!" she murmurs, softly nestling closer in his arms, as
they stand side by side in the twilight shadows.

"Thank God, we are!" he says, with passionate earnestness.  "But
often and often I think, if it had not been for the sins and follies
of the past--for the wrong and the suffering--our love would never
have been as deep and intense a thing as it is.  I shall never forget
those years, and how hopelessly our lives seemed severed--with what
reluctance I came home to England--how I dreaded to hear you were
another's--and then----"

"After all I was your own," she whispers.

"And we are so happy," he resumes presently.  "Are we not, my queen
of æsthetes?"

She laughs a little tremulously.  "Indeed, yes; but I fear, dearest,
the queen has sadly neglected her subjects.  Women's missions are all
very well until men interfere with them.  Then there is a lamentable
failure of all the grand schemes and projects."

"A woman's first mission is to love her husband and make his home a
paradise," answers Colonel Carlisle.  "I am not great at poetry, as
you know, but I own to an admiration of those lines of Tennyson in
'The Princess.'  You know them:

  For woman is not undevelopt man,
  But diverse; could we make her as the man
  Sweet Love were slain; his dearest bond is this,
  Not like to like, but like in difference.
  Yet in the long years liker must they grow--
  The man be more of woman, she of man.
      *   *   *   *   *
  Till at the last she sets herself to man,
  Like perfect music unto noble words."


"Yes," she says.  "They are very true, although a man wrote them."

"Don't you believe our sex understands yours, then?" he asks
teasingly.

"No; I do not," she says decidedly.  "I think no man yet ever quite
comprehended a woman's nature, any more, perhaps, than we comprehend
a man's.  I think that is how we so often mistake and misjudge each
other.  We expect a man to act as we would act, and he expects us to
act as he would; and that can never be.  Another thing: we have such
quick instincts, and are governed so often by sympathy or antipathy;
you are slow in your judgment, and _reason_ where we act."

"Yes," he answers thoughtfully; "but contrast is the salt of life, my
darling.  We should not find any attraction in each other if we were
quite alike, and regulated our lives and actions on the same
principles.  But to return to our subject.  I am certain Lady Jean is
up to some mischief, and I would give anything in the world to get
Keith Athelstone away from her influence.  What _can_ possess him to
be always there?"

"Not always, dear," says his wife rebukingly.  "Three times within a
fortnight.  I cannot understand it myself.  I should like to give him
a hint, but I am afraid.  He might take offence, and I know what men
are.  Warn them against a woman, and they immediately run after her;
try to turn them from a purpose, and they throw themselves heart and
soul into it."

"You should treat them as the Irishman did his pigs--drive them one
way and turn their heads another," laughs Colonel Carlisle.  "But you
surely don't imagine he cares about Lady Jean?"

"No; I give him credit for better sense.  But she is a dangerous
woman, and I am certain has some purpose in view.  I know she hates
Lauraine; I am equally certain that she knows of Keith's infatuation
for her, and I feel convinced she is trying to work some mischief.
You remember her plot about getting him to Falcon's Chase?"

"Yes.  That was a piece of devilry, and no mistake.  I have thought
more of the young fellow since his refusal than ever I did before."

"Keith is a strange character," says Lady Etwynde; "so headstrong and
passionate, yet so loving and true; so wild, and yet so easily
controlled; so selfish, and yet so weak.  Lauraine has a great
influence over him--more than any one else has, I think.  I believe
when once she made him see things in their true light, once she
showed him that the love that would dishonour a woman is the last
love worthy of her acceptance, he would turn from what even seemed
her own tempting.  But he must have known it could not be that."

"Lauraine is a good, true woman, though she has made a fatal mistake
in life, and now it is too late to remedy it," says the Colonel
regretfully.  "What sad words those are, 'too late!'  Just to have
missed all that makes life desirable, just to meet and love, and find
that Fate has placed an impassable barrier between you and that love.
Ah, me!"

"Don't sigh!" whispers his wife tenderly.  "Our 'too late' was just
in time after all."

"Thank God for that!"

"I do," she answers fervently.  "But how my own happiness makes me
regret her loss!  I never thought I could love any woman so dearly as
I love Lauraine; and I feel, oh! so sorry for her now!"

"So do I--for Keith."

"And you think we can do nothing?"

"I fear not.  It is a delicate matter.  He may be only striving for
forgetfulness after all.  Men do foolish and desperate things
sometimes for love's sake."

"That is one of the things we women who love you can't understand,"
says Lady Etwynde.  "To us those excesses to which we are accused of
driving you seem degrading and contemptible.  We can only excuse sins
that are not against ourselves, I suppose."

"Doubtless it looks cowardly," says her husband, "to fling away our
self-respect because something has not been as we wished it; but then
that something is worth everything else in the world, or we think so,
and losing it, all else seems of no account."

"In that respect we set you an example, do we not?" laughs his wife.
"We don't go to perdition because we are disappointed in love."

"Because your natures are so different.  The same rule cannot apply
to a man and a woman.  I thought we had agreed on that before," says
Colonel Carlisle.

"So we had.  Instance Keith and Lauraine."

"And my lady and--myself."

And he bends down and kisses the sweet red lips.

That closes the argument.  They forget all about Keith and Lauraine;
they talk now of their own love, and of each other.




CHAPTER XXXII

It is a week later.  Lady Etwynde and her husband have left Paris and
gone back to the æsthetic mansion in Kensington.  They have decided
on living there still.  To Lady Etwynde it is endeared by many
memories and associations, and her husband is content with whatever
pleases her.  Lady Jean is still in the gay city, and so is Keith
Athelstone.

"How the affair drags!" murmurs the Lady Jean to herself one evening
as she is making her toilette.  "Karolyski is persevering, I can see;
but Keith--he is quite too stupid.  I must try and hasten the
_dénouement_.  Besides, Frank comes back in a few days, and I don't
want _him_ to suspect.  Could I bring matters to an issue to-night, I
wonder?"

She looks at herself in the glass, and a flush of triumph rises to
her cheek.  She looks supremely handsome in a dress of black satin,
with judicious touches of white lace and white flowers; and as she
sweeps into her rooms and sees Keith's involuntary glance of
admiration, she feels a little thrill of triumph.

As the evening goes on, as her guests assemble, she contrives that
Keith Athelstone should be always by her side, and though the
scowling face of Count Karolyski is frequently turned towards her,
she is by no means intimidated.  He and Keith are mutually
antagonistic to each other, and to-night the Count's manner is almost
insulting.

Again, the question of play is mooted, and again he taunts Keith with
his care of his dollars.  The evening is very warm, and the young
fellow has drunk more wine than he usually does, and Lady Jean has
taken care that it is wine both strong and exciting.

At the Count's veiled sneers he loses his temper--never a very
forbearing one--and, forgetful of promises and resolutions, sits down
at the table.

The stakes grow higher; he is winning fast.  Again and again he is
victor and again and again does the money of the Count flow into his
keeping.  Lady Jean comes near him and leans against his chair.  Her
perfumed hair almost sweeps his cheek.  As he glances up he meets all
the dark intensity and lustre of her eyes.

"You are wonderfully fortunate in--everything," she says, smiling;
and the Count glances up and crushes back an oath between his set
teeth.  Then quite suddenly, and with the most serene innocence, Lady
Jean stoops and picks up a card by Keith's side.  "You have dropped
this," she says, and lays it on the table.

"The ace of spades--you have already played that, monsieur!" says
Count Karolyski.

"It cannot be mine, then," says Keith quietly.

The Count throws his cards contemptuously on the table.

"Monsieur's luck may be wonderful, but with double aces in his hand
it is not so remarkable after all!"

Keith starts up--his hot young blood aflame: "What do you mean--do
you dare insinuate----"

The Count's laugh falls across the horrified silence of the guests as
they draw near.

"Insinuate?  No, monsieur--it is for you to explain, I think."

"I have nothing to explain," says Keith proudly.  "There is no proof
that that card belonged to me.  If you doubt my word, my honour, I am
perfectly willing to answer for both."

"Hush! hush! what are you saying," cries Lady Jean, horrified.  "Of
course it is a mistake.  Mr. Athelstone, pray be calm."

Calm!  The hot blood is rushing through Keith's veins--his eyes have
their worst and most passionate light.  "Your friend has thought fit
to insult me, madame," he says.  "I demand an apology
or--satisfaction."

"_Pardieu_, monsieur!" laughs the Count, in his most insulting
manner.  "I am sorry I cannot answer your first demand; as to the
other--I am at your service."

There is an instant's silence.  Women with blanched faces, men with
surprise and embarrassment, look on these two who face each other--on
the tall, slight figure with its dauntless grace of bearing, on the
blue eyes flaming with anger and defiance; and then on the cruel,
smiling lips, and calm, dark face of the Hungarian.

Count Karolyski turns, says a few words to a man near by, and then,
with a bow, leaves the room.

Keith turns to Lady Jean.  "I regret that such a scene should have
happened in your house," he says, calming his voice by a violent
effort.  "You will excuse my withdrawing now, madam?"  She has grown
very pale.  As he quits the salon she follows him.

"Mr. Athelstone, do not proceed to extremities.  The Count is a
deadly shot.  He has fought more duels than I could tell you--and
you----"

"Do you fancy I am afraid?" interrupts Keith, turning his flashing
eyes upon her face.  "Or that I value my life so much, I would try to
save it even for less cause?  No; let him do his worst.  An insult
like that----"

"It was shameful, I know," says Lady Jean.  "But still, you might
leave Paris--you might----"

"For what do you take me?" interrupts Keith passionately.  "Do you
think I am a coward?"

"No; oh, no," she murmurs.  "Only you are so young, and life is all
before you.  Why should you forfeit love, happiness, all that may be
in store, just for a fancied insult that has questioned your honour?"

Keith looks at her searchingly.  The old vague distrust of this woman
is at work within his heart.  He answers her very coldly.

"It _is_ my honour I avenge.  I do not fancy even you, as a woman,
could counsel the acceptance of such an insult as your friend has
thought fit to put upon me."  And with a bow he leaves her presence.




CHAPTER XXXIII

An hour later.  Lady Jean sits alone in her boudoir.  Her guests have
all gone.  A flush of excitement burns on her cheek, her eyes look
triumphant.

"Victory at last!" she murmurs to herself.  "When she hears he is
dead, and has met his death through my instrumentality, I think she
will know that I too can avenge insult.  I have taken her husband and
her lover from her.  I said my hour would come.  It has come."

There is a stir, a noise of footsteps without.  The door is thrust
hurriedly open, and Count Karolyski comes in.  Involuntarily Lady
Jean rises.  She is annoyed and troubled, and a little afraid.

"Monsieur, you know I do not receive at this hour."

"So your people told me, but my business pleads an excuse.  I will
not detain you long, madame.  I have come to say I will spare
your--lover--on one condition."

"I do not understand you," falters Lady Jean, turning very pale.  He
smiles his cold and evil smile.

"No?  Well, I will put it more plainly.  I will retract my words.
This duel shall not take place if you will be my wife."

She turns on him, angry and amazed.  "Monsieur, you do me much
honour.  But what I have refused to love, I will scarcely yield to
intimidation!"

He draws his breath sharply.

"Stay; listen to me.  Take heed before you refuse.  I have told you I
have scoffed at love all my life till you taught me to recant my
error.  A man at my age does not love lightly, nor is he easily
turned from his purpose.  To win you I would do anything--to lose you
drives me desperate.  If you refuse my prayer to-night, your
boy-lover shall never see your face again.  I swear it, and my oath
is no less fatal than my hand can be."

She turns aside; there is a smile of triumph on her lips.  Has she
fooled him so well that he actually believes Keith Athelstone is his
rival?

As she stands there, silent and thoughtful, a servant knocks at the
door and enters with a telegram.

She hastily seizes it and reads the contents, and all the blood seems
to forsake her face.  Trembling, she sinks into a chair.

"If all should be lost even now?" she thinks, and her eyes turn in
momentary appeal to the stern.  cold face of the Count.  "I--I will
think of what you have said," she falters.  "But, believe me, you are
wrong when you think Keith Athelstone is anything to me.  He is not;
he never will be.  As for his life I would not spare it if I could."

"What?" he cries, amazed.

"He--he has insulted me," stammers Lady Jean.  "I cannot tell you--I
cannot explain; only if you love me you will avenge me--not by his
death, that I would not say .... I wish you to wound him, and in such
a manner that the issue may be fatal--or otherwise--but in any case
that it may be uncertain enough to allow of a messenger being sent to
England to--a--a friend of his.  Do you understand?"

"That I am to be a tool for you?  Perfectly, madame.  And my reward?"

"You shall ask for it when you have done my bidding," she murmurs
softly, and holds out her hand for the clasp of that one whose stains
of blood-guiltiness are to receive yet another addition, at her
bidding.

He takes hers, and bends down and presses his lips upon it fervently.
"I will do your will," he says; "he shall live to suffer.  But,
madame, remember, I am no fool to be trifled with.  If you fail in
your part of the bargain it will be at your own peril.  Neither man
nor woman has ever baulked me of my will, who has not lived to rue
it.  You may have fooled a score of men, but you shall not fool me!
Love like mine may be play to rouse, but it is death when roused."

She looks him calmly in the face.  "I have no intention of deceiving
you.  Promise me that Keith Athelstone shall have but a few days'
life left--and----"

Her glance promises the rest.  It has all the intoxication, the
responsive meaning, that can inflame men's passions--that has ever
swayed them to her will.  It sways him now.

He draws her to his heart with a fierce and sudden tenderness, and
she lets his lips rest unrebuked upon her own.  "I promise," he
murmurs; and she knows he means it.


The telegram that has reached Lady Jean has been despatched from
Monte Carlo.  It contains these lines:


"_Sir Francis Vavasour lies here dangerously ill--it is feared with
typhoid fever.  He asks constantly for you.  Come at once._"


When Lady Jean is once more alone she reads the message with a
contemptuous laugh.

"He must be mad," she says.  "I to run the risk of infection--I to
turn sick-nurse!  I to run the gauntlet of scandal and discussion
for--him!  Pshaw! if he wants a ministering angel, let him send to
Lauraine.  It is her _metier_, not mine."  Then she goes to her
writing-table and takes pen and ink and writes these lines:


"Your husband is dangerously ill.  The enclosed telegram will
explain.  Keith Athelstone was severely wounded in a duel fought in
Paris this evening, and he has only a few days to live.  If you wish
to see him alive come at once.  He is at Lady Jean Salomans' house,
No. 13, Rue Victoire Paris."


This letter she seals and addresses and despatches immediately.
Then, with that same light of triumph in her eyes, that same
relentless and unsparing hate in her heart, she goes to her room and
to rest.

No ill dreams disturb her--no sleepless hours of weary wakefulness.
She has never known remorse in all her life, and in her ears the
"still, small voice" of conscience has long ceased to whisper.  And
as her eyes close in sleep to-night she only thinks: "Vengeance is
mine!"




CHAPTER XXXIV

Alone in the dreary solitude of Falcon's Chase, Lauraine receives
that message from her enemy.  It is early morning; the sun is
shining, the birds in the forest avenues are singing their gladdest
and loudest welcome to spring; she stands at the window of her
morning-room and reads those lines penned in the Rue Victoire, and a
great darkness seems to come over her.

All her energies seem paralysed; she cannot think, cannot decide.
Her husband dangerously ill, alone in a foreign land, deserted by the
woman for whom he has wronged his wife, and Keith--Keith dying.

The sunlight seems to blind her; the light of day is cruel.  Her
heart feels numbed and dead, and in her brain a thousand hammers seem
to beat, and through all that numbness and discord one thought alone
shapes itself in stern and terrible distinctness.  One thought; it is
Duty!

He has neglected her, he has outraged her, he has forfeited all
honour and respect.  Yet none the less is he her husband, none the
less is he the father of her child.

Her child! who lay in her bosom, and smiled into her eyes and made
earth Paradise for just a little space!

But Keith?  Keith, whom she loves; Keith, whom she has wronged; Keith
dying, and she cannot be near him, cannot meet once more the look of
the "bad blue eyes," cannot whisper peace or comfort to the young and
passion-wrecked soul!

Her heart feels breaking.  The awfulness of this decision seems
beyond her strength to make; and yet she knows--she cannot but
know--which is the right course, because of its very hardness.

"I have sinned; I must suffer," she groans despairingly, and then
moves away with half-blind eyes, and feels as if her heart must break
at last.  How can she live on and endure such misery?

In an hour her preparations are complete, and she starts for London.
A thought strikes her on her way.  At the first available station she
gets out and sends a telegram to Lady Etwynde, bidding her meet her
at the London terminus.  At the terminus her friend is waiting and
Colonel Carlisle also.  In a few hurried, broken words Lauraine tells
them all.

"And you are actually going to _him_!" cried Lady Etwynde, amazed.

"I must; it is what I ought to do," falters Lauraine piteously.  "I
cannot leave him to die there alone uncared for.  After all, he is my
husband."

"You are right!" exclaims Lady Etwynde hurriedly.  "But a thought
strikes me.  I--will go to Paris and see Keith Athelstone.  You will
let me, will you not, Cyril?  Perhaps, after all, that fiend is
lying."

Lauraine looks at her with unspeakable gratitude.

"Oh, if you would--if only you would!" she cries passionately.

"Certainly we will!" exclaims Colonel Carlisle.  "Etwynde is quite
right.  And I do not see why we shouldn't all go as far as Paris
together.  We have two hours to spare.  Time enough to get what we
want--money and wraps.  All the rest we can get in Paris."

So it is hurriedly arranged, and the night express sees them all _en
route_ for the French capital, the Colonel and his wife doing their
best to console and cheer Lauraine, whose utter prostration and
despair alarm them.

At Paris, Colonel Carlisle decides that she is really in no fit
condition to travel alone; and having seen his wife fairly started
for the address Lady Jean has given, he takes charge of Lauraine, and
goes on with her to the Riviera.  When the long, fatiguing journey is
over, and they reach Monte Carlo, they find Sir Francis even worse
than the telegram had led them to imagine.  Lauraine will not hear of
Colonel Carlisle staying with her any longer.  The fever must take
its course; there is nothing but careful nursing and watchfulness to
be exercised, and so she sends him back to Paris, and takes up her
station by the bedside of the man who has wronged and outraged her so
often--whose fretful moans even now are all for that other woman.

The _Soeur de Charité_ watching beside him looks up in surprise as
the slight young figure and beautiful face bend over the unconscious
man.

"It is madame--for whom he has been always asking?" she asks
hesitatingly.

Lauraine looks gravely up.

"I am his wife," she says simply.


Day after day passes wearily, slowly by.  Then comes a letter from
Lady Etwynde.

"It is all true," she writes; "Keith has been shot, and all for some
disgraceful scrape in which that woman is mixed up.  But he is not at
her house; he is in his own, and Lady Jean has gone off with the man.
Every one is talking of it.  Keith is in the utmost danger; but if
skill and care can do anything, I do not despair of him yet.  The
shot was within a hair's-breadth of piercing his left lung.  He knows
me, and I whispered to him I was here by your desire.  You should
have seen the look in the boy's eyes: I feel so sorry for him; he is
so young, and he lies there in this awful state, and I know his heart
is aching for sight of you.  Lauraine, I see that woman's scheme now.
She wanted you to make a false step, one that would have ruined you
for ever.  Had you left your husband's house to come to Keith it
would have looked as if you had fled to your lover.  Sir Francis
would have been justified in doing anything.  But how you had the
courage, the self-denial, to act as you have done puzzles me.  I
could not have believed it, though I thought I knew you so well.
But, as I have told you before, hard as duty is, it brings its own
reward, and God will surely bless you with peace at last."

Lauraine reads the letter with streaming eyes, sitting there beside
her husband's couch.  Her heart is wrung with agony, her eyes are
full of anguish unutterable.

"Duty," she sighs.  "Ah, what a poor cold thing duty looks," and she
falls on her knees and prays for the young life she loves, and for
that other life trembling now in the balance.  As she rises from her
knees her husband turns wearily on his pillow.  His eyes unclose, and
with a faint gleam of consciousness look at her.

"Lauraine!" he murmurs.

She leans over him, and touches his fevered hands.  "Yes; it is I,"
she says.

"You--and here; where--where----"

He can say no more.  She stays him with a hasty gesture.  "You must
not talk, it is forbidden.  It is enough that I heard you were
ill--that I came."

"And she--Jean?"

A flush comes to Lauraine's pale cheeks; her eyes grow dark and
indignant.  "She!  Did you actually suppose she would risk her
convenience or comfort for the sake of any human being?  She has
found other consolation."  He tries to spring up, but weakness
overpowers him.  "The curse of hell be upon her--fiend, she-devil,
temptress!" and then once again the ravings of delirium crowd his
brain, and he knows nothing of her who is beside him.


It is a terrible time for Lauraine.  She takes scarcely food or rest.
She tends and watches the sick man with untiring patience; all the
more stern is she in her task of self-denial because she knows it is
a task, because she will not spare herself one iota of the pain and
weariness that her labours demand.  The physicians praise her
devotion, and in his lucid moments the sick man murmurs blessings on
her, and utters such vows of penitence and remorse as might gladden
the heart of any wife whose love and patience had reclaimed her
husband from his errors.  But they do not gladden Lauraine.

The weary burden presses more heavily; the iron enters more deeply
into her soul.  But she has resolved to go through with her task, and
she dares not count the cost.

"He is better," say the physicians.  "He will live."

The news comes to her, and she is silent, then sinks on her knees and
hides her face from sight.  They think she is overpowered with
emotion, and go softly away and leave her--leave her fighting out a
weary battle, sick at heart with shame that in her mind is no
gladness, only a duller, sadder despair.




CHAPTER XXXV

            No man sees
  Beyond the gods and fate.


It is night, and in the sick-room all is hushed and still.

Lauraine, in her soft grey dress is sitting beside the bed.  She is
alone; the first three hours are her watch.  She thinks her husband
is asleep--he lies so still, and his eyes are closed.  She looks
white and frail as a broken lily.  Her head leans on her hands; the
whole expression of her face is one so sad, so heart-crushed, that it
might have made any one who loved her weep to read it.

Suddenly she looks at the quiet figure.  His eyes are fixed on her
face.  He has been watching her.

"Will you ever forgive me, Lauraine?" he says faintly.  "I have been
such a brute, and you--I always said you were too good a woman.  It
must have needed an angel's heart to do what you have done."

"It was nothing--nothing," she says hurriedly.  "Sick-nursing was
always my _forte_, you know.  Besides, I only did my duty."

"Your duty!" he echoes, with something of the old bitterness.  "It is
well for you that you have so strong a sense of it.  I have forgotten
what the word means."

She is silent.  There is a long pause.  After a while he speaks again.

"I have ruined your life, I know, and now it is too late--too late to
make amends.  Still, the best amends I could make would be to free
you from myself--and that will soon be the case, Lauraine.  Hush!  Do
you suppose I believe what those fools said to-day--that a man cannot
tell when his end is near?  I shall not plague you any longer--and
you may be happy--yet."

"Don't say that," entreats Lauraine, kneeling beside him, and taking
the hand he extends so feebly.  "There is every hope now; the worst
is over.  You are only weak, and that makes you dispirited about
yourself."

He shakes his head.  "I know; I know.  Promise me one thing.  You
will not leave me; you will stay with me to the end.  Last night I
had a dream.  I thought I was alone--all alone, and it was all black
and dark, and you had left me; and look where I would there were
fiends grinning at me, and all my past sins seemed a burning fire
upon my soul.  It was horrible.  Bad as I am, and have been, say you
won't forsake me till the end, Lauraine; it is some comfort to have a
good woman's prayers.  I can feel that at last."

"I will not leave you, do not fear," Lauraine assures him earnestly.

"But promise, child," he says restlessly, "promise."

And with a great wonder, but most gentle earnestness, she promises.


Another hour.

She kneels there still.  He has fallen into a fitful doze, from which
he starts from time to time, to be reassured only by the pressure of
her hand--murmur from her lips.


Another hour.

The darkness of the night creeps on, slowly, wearily enough.  The
prayers her lips have framed are hushed now.  He sleeps more calmly,
more tranquilly, than he has done yet.


Another hour.

The Sister who relieves her comes softly in.  She holds something in
her hand, which she gives to Lauraine.

For a second's space, as her eyes rest on the little yellow paper,
Lauraine grows faint with a great and unaccountable dread.  Then she
opens the envelope and reads the message within.


"They say there is no hope.  If you can by any means leave Sir
Francis, do come here.  His one prayer is for a sight of you before
he dies."


The paper flutters from her hand.  She does not speak or move, only
stands there as if frozen to stone.

"I must go, I must go!" she says in her heart.  "Dying!  Oh, my love,
my love!  Are you leaving me thus?  Will God not have pity on you?"

Mechanically, like one in a dream, she moves away; she scarcely knows
whither she is going.  Only that one impulse is in her mind--to fly
to Keith's side at last; to bid him farewell on earth as never had
she thought to bid it; to kiss for the last time those eyes that she
seemed to see before her even now--tender, triumphant, agonized,
beseeching, as had been his words!

As her hand is on the door a faint sound reaches her ears, and
pierces through the mists that cloud her brain as though its feeble
utterance were a trumpet's blast.  It is her husband's voice.

"Lauraine," he sighs, and moves restlessly in his sleep.  She stands
there like one stunned.  "Oh, God!" she murmurs within herself, "_my
promise!_"


Alone in her own room Lauraine sits in a sort of stupor, merciful in
its dull pain, since it renders all thought powerless for the time
being.

Her husband has need of her.  She has promised to stay with him, and
she must keep her word.  No past sins or errors of his should be the
measure of her duty, so she had felt; and now her word is given, and
Keith's dying eyes seem to summon her across the weary distance that
separates them, and she dares not go.

It is but a few moments since she has left her husband's side, but
the Sister comes to her now to entreat her to return.  Sir Francis is
asking for her.  She rises mechanically, and goes back to the
sick-room.  The gaunt face, the eager eyes are turned towards the
door.

"You promised not to leave me," he whispers, faintly, and Lauraine
cannot find it in her heart to tell him that she needs rest, that she
is worn and spent with long hours of anxiety and suspense.

"Come here--sit down--so--close to me," he continues brokenly.  "Tell
her to go.  I must speak to you alone."  Lauraine turns and makes a
sign to the Sister.  She leaves the room at once.

Then Sir Francis turns and holds out in his hand the little paper
that had held for her a message of eternal woe.  "Is--is it true?"

She bows her head.  Words will not come.

"You dropped it.  I asked the woman to give it me," says her husband.
"Lauraine, don't stay here for--for my sake; if it will comfort you
or--him--go."

A flush comes over the white, sad face, then fades and dies away.
"My place is by you," she answers.

"By me?" he echoes bitterly.  "By the wretch whose selfishness and
brutality have ruined your life?  My God!"

There is a long silence.  He takes her hands and looks at her.  "Even
my death cannot atone now.  I thought it might.  It is true, is it
not?  You do--love--him?"

"Yes," she answers simply.  "But why speak of that now?  The past is
over and done with.  You told me once I was only strong because I had
been untempted.  Ah! how little you knew!"

"That he should die," mutters Sir Francis.  "Young--brave--hopeful.
For me--it is no matter.  How is it, Lauraine?  Tell me all!"

"He was shot," she says, marvelling how she can speak so calmly--how
dull and far away seems everything in and out of her life.  "In
Paris.  Some dispute arose between him and--and a friend of Lady Jean
Salomans'.  They met in the Bois, and Keith was dangerously wounded.
They say now there is--no hope."

Oh, the weariness of the voice, the anguish of the white, sad face.

"She," mutters Sir Francis.  "Was this her vengeance?"  Then he is
silent again.

"Lauraine, go to Keith Athelstone; I command you.  If there is
time--if you see him alive tell him I bade you go--tell him I ask his
pardon for the wrong I have done him.  Go, child; why do you linger
here--every moment is precious.  Do you think I am so altogether
selfish that I cannot see how you suffer--cannot feel all you have
done--for me?  Go."

"But you," she says hesitatingly; "you need me; you wished me to
stay."

"I am better.  I feel stronger," he says, with brave effort.  "And
the worst is over; you need not fear for me.  I have wronged you
enough.  Let me feel I have tried to do one unselfish action--even at
the last."

She looks at his face--at the drawn, sharpened features, the sunken
eyes, the hollow cheeks.  A sudden fear and reproach smite her.

"I cannot leave you," she says, with a burst of tears.  "We have been
most unhappy, I know, but you are my husband--my child's father."

"And the man for whom you have no love.  Child! do not waste time in
folly.  At a moment like this we see things as they are--naked, bare,
undisguised.  Take my message to him, and comfort him with your
presence.  It is the one thing I can do for you both; and I do it
with all my heart.  Spare no expense--gold will speed your journey,
and I--I shall wait here till I know--he has forgiven."

Still she hesitates.  Still she feels as if she were in some way
wronging the man to whom duty binds her, for sake of the man she
loves.  He grows impatient.

"For me the worst is past.  I shall do very well now.  Are you
scrupulous as to that?--know no fear.  You have been obedient in all
things that caused you suffering.  Can you not be it for one thing
that you desire?  Must I storm--insist?"

"Oh, hush," she says passionately; "it is so hard--if only I knew--

"You do know.  I bid you go, and that without an evil thought--you
have but to obey."

Then she leaves him.  He listens to the hurried preparations.  A
strange, feverish strength seems to have come to him.  As he has
said, it is the one really unselfish action he has ever performed in
his life.  For though he has bidden her leave him, he is longing for
her presence.  He knows his own hours are numbered, despite the hopes
held out.  He knows that to have her with him during the dreadful
ordeal through which he has to pass would be the only comfort that
life holds.  He shudders as he lies there face to face with death, as
the cold waters of the great river seem to flow on--on--up to his
very feet; and in that awful passage there will be no voice to
whisper comfort, no prayers from that low, sweet woman's voice to
tell of peace, of hope, of the gates of mercy standing open yet, even
to the greatest of sinners.  He shudders, and the cold dews of
anguish stand upon his brow.  But he is strong still, strong enough
to hide the truth from her.  She comes to bid him farewell, and he
looks long and sorrowfully at the fair, sad face.  How changed she
is, how changed!

"You will kiss me--just once, bad as I am," he whispers, and with the
tears standing thick in her eyes she bends down and for the first
time in all their married life kisses him of her own free will.

"God bless you," she murmurs fervently.

"Say you forgive," he entreats, laying his hand on hers.

"I have forgiven--long ago," she answers, and with murmured words of
hopefulness and trust, they part; part to meet on this side of the
grave never, never more.




CHAPTER XXXVI

Very feebly and faintly the pulse of life is flickering in Keith
Athelstone's frame.  Very despairingly does Lady Etwynde watch beside
him.

It is twelve hours since that last message went.  Twelve hours, and
in every one of these has that same question been on the dying
lips--"Will she come?"

They cannot tell.  They can only hope.

At last he falls asleep, and Lady Etwynde sits there, sad and anxious
and full of grief for the two lives whose short years have held such
bitter suffering--before which now stretches the gulf of an eternal
parting.

The sky grows rosy with the dawn, the sunlight steals in through the
closed blinds, and plays about the quiet room, and Lady Etwynde
softly opens the window, and the cool fresh air steals in, and its
breath plays over the pallid young face that lies on the pillows,
looking like sculptured marble.  Quite suddenly he lifts his languid
eyelids and looks eagerly, joyfully up.  "She is coming!" he cries.
"I know it."

The hours pass on, but that inward conviction remains unshaken.
Something--some mysterious prescience for which he cannot
account--tells him that his darling will be by his side.  He is quite
patient now, and quite calm--calm with the fulness of a great
content.  The day passes on to noon and noon to even-tide.  He asks
no more that question: "Will she come?"  He knows it is answered.


The door opens softly and without sound.  He is lying with closed
eyes--the hired nurse is by his side.  Lady Etwynde is not there.

Some one comes in and moves towards the bed, and bends over the quiet
figure.  How still he is; is it sleep, or----?

The lids, with their long, dark lashes, suddenly open and looking
back to her own with the old boyish, adoring love that nothing can
chill or change, are the "bad blue eyes" of her girlhood's lover.

She sinks on her knees; she is trembling greatly; she finds no words
to say, but none are needed.

Pain, weakness, weariness, seem to flee away before the magic of her
presence; over the white face comes such radiance and tenderness as
never has she seen.

"It is you.  I knew you would come, Lorry."

"My darling boy!" she half sobs, half sighs, and then a great
darkness sweeps over her like a cloud, and she sees his face no more.

The nurse summons Lady Etwynde.  She is horrified at this occurrence.
It will be so bad for her patient.  "The shock is enough to kill
him"--so she murmurs as they busy themselves with the unconscious
woman.

Keith watches them quietly, not even anxious or disturbed.  All his
life seems to have become one great calm now.

"Kill me----" he says, as the nurse's words reach him.  "She has
given me life!"

And indeed it seems as if she had, for from that hour slowly but
surely he begins to mend.

The weakness and exhaustion against which his physicians had battled,
no longer hold his strength in their control.  Hope, peace, joy have
come to him with Lauraine's presence, and with them comes also the
desire to live.

"It is wonderful!" say the doctors.

"It is wonderful!" echoes Lady Etwynde, standing by Lauraine's side
some two days later, and noting the change that at last leaves room
for hope.

The blue eyes look up to one face--the face that has haunted his
life, and seems to have called him back across the border-land on
which his feet have rested.

"It is not wonderful," they seem to say, "it is only--love."




CHAPTER XXXVII

"Dear, dear!  Now, only _do_ tell!" exclaims Mrs. Bradshaw Woollffe,
in the solemn conclave of a feminine gathering at the commencement of
the London season.  "You ought to know, Mrs. Douglas.  Is your
daughter really going to marry Keith Athelstone after all?"

"After all!" echoes Mrs. Douglas.  "All what!"

"Well, I guess you know pretty well what people said two seasons ago.
But to think things should turn out like this--quite a romance!  Only
to think of it!"

"It is not so unnatural," says Mrs. Douglas loftily.  "Mr. Athelstone
was always deeply attached to my daughter, and, in fact, came home
from America with the intention of proposing.  But he was just too
late.  My dear girl had accepted Sir Francis Vavasour."

"Is that so?  Well, I've heard another shaped tale about that.
Anyhow, it seems Sir Francis was a brute to her, and she--well, any
one who knows Lauraine, knows she's got real downright good stuff in
her; and as for Vavasour--isn't there one of your national poets
says: 'Nothing in his life became him like his leaving it'?  That's
just about his sort for an epitaph, I should say.  No offence, I
hope, Mrs. Douglas, though he was your son-in-law.  You know I always
speak my mind right plump out.  There's no nonsense about me."

"I am not in the least offended," says Mrs. Douglas sweetly.  "All
men have faults, and Sir Francis Vavasour was certainly not as
devoted a husband as my dear child had reason to expect.  But you see
she is rather cold and prudish, and all that, and he--well, he had
been spoilt by society.  We must excuse him for being a little wild,
and really they got on very well together, and nothing could exceed
his kindness and generosity to Lauraine.  And he has left her
everything."

"And she's going to marry Keith Athelstone?"

"Well, her husband has been dead for nearly a year, and dear Keith is
so very delicate since that accident, and he has been ordered to
winter at Algiers, and nothing will induce him to go unless Lauraine
goes also."

"That was a queer thing too," says Mrs. Bradshaw B. Woollffe eagerly.
"Never could make head or tail of it.  Lady Jean was kind of mixed up
in that duel, wasn't she?"

"Really," says Mrs. Douglas, with her most stately air, "I must
decline to say anything about that woman.  Her conduct has been quite
too disgraceful.  Quite."

"Her conduct was no better or worse, that I can see, when her husband
was alive," answers Mrs. Woollffe.  "She was always bad, though, of
course, no one could see it until Joel Salomans had lost all his
money.  I've never heard a good word of her since."

Mrs. Douglas looks uncomfortable.

"Of course, as long as society is not publicly outraged, as long as
there is some show of decency, it puts up with a great deal; but when
any one is imprudent enough to over-step the boundary mark, that
alters the case."

"Of course," agrees Mrs. Woollffe, with a smile.  "It's only natural
to wink at what suits our convenience.  I wonder why Lady Jean has
never come to London again since she married that foreigner,
Count----what's his name?"

"Count Karolyski.  I don't know, I'm sure, But I think it is just as
well.  No one in her old set could possibly receive her."

"Well, your English society beats me!" exclaims Mrs. Bradshaw B.
Woollffe.  "Guess you're the rummest lot of people on the face of
creation.  What--you're not going?"

"Yes, I must.  It is Lady Etwynde Carlisle's day, you know; and I
want to look in and hear some later news of my child.  She
corresponds so constantly with her friend.  Of course, it is only
natural."

"Old cat," murmurs Mrs. Woollffe, as the satin skirts trail away in
the distance.  "You could not blackguard your daughter enough once,
and now it's 'dear child,' and 'dear Keith.'  Ugh!  I've no patience
with such humbug.  Ah, there is Nan and her husband.  Nan, my dear,
such news.  Keith Athelstone is going to marry, and whom do you
think?"

"Lady Vavasour, of course," answers the young Countess of Longleat
quietly.

"Why, you knew!" exclaims Mrs. Bradshaw Woollffe, disappointed.

"I didn't; I only guessed.  I always thought it would come to that.
Poor Keith!"

She sighs, and the radiant eyes grow a little dim.  A vision of the
handsome face and figure of the man who had been her girlish hero
rises suddenly before her; in contrast to them she sees the red hair
and burly frame of her own lord and master.  "Well, fretting's no
good," she says, with a little laugh at the contrast.  "I was awfully
fond of Keith, and I do hope he'll be happy at last.  He's had a long
spell of--the other thing."


And meanwhile where is the prime mover in the plot that was to ruin
Lauraine's happiness--that was to have been a scheme of vengeance
perfect as woman's malice and skill could make it?  The world of
society, of fashion--the world which she delights in, and has
delighted--knows Lady Jean no more.

If she had never met her master in all her life before, she met him
in the person of Count Karolyski.  He was a stern tyrant and a
jealous ruler.  Once his wife, and once safe among the gloomy
solitudes of his own possessions in the Carpathian range, there was
neither peace nor liberty for the Lady Jean.

Passionate, exacting, cruel, domineering, this man, who had for her
an absorbing passion, but neither trust nor belief, resolved that she
should never escape his keeping, let her chafe and fret as she would.

When she heard of Sir Francis Vavasour's death she had congratulated
herself on her prudent acceptance of this other man, more especially
as she knew that his action had rid Lauraine of her lover, and
poisoned all the freedom of her sudden release.

But when in course of time she learnt of Keith's recovery, her rage
and fury knew no bounds.  Then, for the first time as yet in their
married life, she gave her husband a specimen of her tigress temper;
but then also for the first, though not the last time, did she learn
that she had sold herself into a bondage from which there was no
escape, and, galled, fretted, half broken-hearted, she found herself
compelled to do his bidding, and accept her present fate.

If Lauraine had been unhappy too, it would have sweetened the gall
and wormwood of her own lot; but that her rival should now have peace
and happiness, and she herself sink to a life that was as dreary as a
captive's, was the crowning stab to her many wounds.

And yet, burn in anger, chafe in humiliation as she might, there was
no help for her and no possibility of escape.  The violence of her
tempestuous passions only seemed to amuse him.  Tears and reproaches
alike beat against the stony calm and immovability of his nature, as
futile waves may lash a rock that has borne their fury for centuries.

Do what she might, act as she pleased, one fact alone showed itself
to her.  She was a disappointed and helpless woman, and she was in
the power of a master against whom it was useless to rebel.  The long
dreary days went by, empty as a rifled grave, cold with the chill of
an endless despair.

Such was her life; such would be her life for all the future now.
Her soul might rebel as it would, and her heart grow sick within her
as the sullen shadows of memory dogged her every footstep, but she
was powerless to evade or resent.  Her evil deeds had gained now
their own reward--the vengeance she had planned for another had
recoiled on her own head.


And where are the two about whom so much gossip is rife, concerning
whom so many tongues are wagging?

Have the sundered lives been joined at last?  Has fate done its
worst, and, wearied of spite, grown callous now as to what may or may
not ensue?

Two days after Lauraine had left him, Sir Francis Vavasour died.  His
presentiment had been true, but his sacrifice had in some way
softened the bitterness of death.

Lauraine was smitten with terrible remorse.  It seemed to her always
as if she should have withstood his wishes and remained by his side
until the end.

Even her husband's dying words--the message penned by his
hand--failed to comfort her, and it took all Lady Etwynde's
persuasions, and all Colonel Carlisle's strong common sense, and all
Keith's tender reproaches to lessen the sharpness of her own
self-accusation--to convince her that her fault, if fault it were,
deserved no such harsh condemnation as she feared.

A year has passed since freedom came to her--a year so peaceful and
so calm that sorrow and pain and self-accusing seem lulled to rest,
and once again Keith whispers of happiness in store.

A year, and to-morrow she will wed her lover.

He kneels by her side in the summer moonlight--his heart too full of
rapture for words--his eyes resting ever on her face with that
adoration neither has wearied of yet.

"You are happy--you are _sure_ you are happy?" he asks, as he has
asked a thousand times before.

"Ah, yes," she sighs.  "Too happy almost, it seems to me."

"And of what were you thinking all this long time?"

"I was thinking of something Etwynde told me long ago, dear when I
was very wicked, very discontented, very wretched."

"What was it?"

"That anthem from the 'Elijah': 'Trust in the Lord; wait patiently
for Him, and He will give thee thy heart's desire.'"

"And what was--your--heart's desire, my own?"

"Can you ask?" she murmurs passionately; and in the soft summer dusk
he draws her arms about his neck, and kisses the trembling lips.

"I can, I do.  Tell me," he says, with soft insistence.

"Just your own graceless self, Keith!"



THE END



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