"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."