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.