"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
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.