"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.