Lauraine waits to hear no more. Astonishment has kept her spellbound. Now she turns from the room with a sickening, horrible sense of shame in her heart, with the blood dyeing her white face, with all the dignity and pride of womanhood stung and outraged by this unexpected discovery. Her husband and Lady Jean are cognizant of Keith's mad passion for herself, have actually plotted to bring him under her roof, to throw them together once again. For what purpose?
Like a lightning flash the whole terrible truth seems to burst upon her. Suspicions, hints, all take new shape by the light of this new discovery—her husband's long friendship for Lady Jean, his indifference to herself. But that he could have stooped so low as to plan his wife's dishonour for the sake of his own freedom—— It seems to her almost incredible.
The whole pitfall opened for her feet now confronts her fully and clearly. If Keith had accepted, if he had come here—she unconscious of the invitation, and unable to oppose it once so accepted—what then?
"Oh, my darling," she half sobs, "thank God you were brave and true to your better self! They may suspect our love, but, as there is a Heaven above, they shall never shame it to their own baseness!"
She kneels by her bed in an agony of weeping. Fear, shame, rage, disgust, sweep over her by turns. She sees the whole plot, and her own long blindness, and yet she knows she is powerless to resent either! If her husband accuses her of loving Keith she cannot deny it, and to explain to a mind so coarse and base the struggle and the sufferings that love has cost her, would only bring down ridicule and win her no belief.
She feels quite helpless. Her enemy knows her secret, and her evil mind will colour it and send it flying abroad, and she is powerless to resent, or to deny.
A loathing, a horror of herself—of them—comes upon her. It seems to her scarcely possible that they could have sunk so low, could have plotted anything so evil. And then bitter thoughts come into her mind. Of what use to try and do right, to struggle, and sacrifice as she has done? Duty has brought to her only added shame, only a crueller trial!
There is but one grain of comfort to her now in all her sorrow. It is that Keith has been brave and true to his word, that for her sake he has forfeited self for once.
"Had he listened, had he come, he would have been a coward," she says to herself, and then the thought of his danger, his weakness, comes over her, and she weeps wildly and passionately in her loneliness. She dares say no word of sympathy, dares show no sign; she, too, must appear cold, unmoved, uncaring.
"Oh, dear Heaven!" she prays in her sorrow and her pain. "Where will it end—where will it end? Will my strength endure for my life?"