"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?