All through that day Lauraine keeps in her own room. Sir Francis does not approach her. He is quite confident that his threat has taken effect—that she will never proceed to extremities. He has not seen Lady Jean to tell her of his wife's discovery, and he dares not send her another message. When he goes down to dinner he finds his wife in the drawing-room. She looks very pale, and is dressed in black velvet. Lady Etwynde is beside her, and Colonel Carlisle is standing near.
Sir Francis has scarcely entered the room when Lady Jean follows. She and Lauraine have not met that day. She walks up to her hostess, extending her hand.
Lauraine draws her slender figure up to its full height, and, with a cold bow, turns aside to speak to Colonel Carlisle. For an instant Lady Jean looks at her as if stunned. Then the blood rushes in a torrent to her face and neck. She knows the meaning of such an action only too well. Dinner is announced now, and Sir Francis, who has also observed this act of his wife's, offers his arm to Lady Jean. Colonel Carlisle does the same to Lauraine, and Lady Etwynde follows.
The dinner is a dreary affair. Each of them feels a scene is impending, and Colonel Carlisle, who has some inkling of how matters stand, is very uncomfortable. He resolves that on the morrow Etwynde and himself must quit Falcon's Chase, sorry as he is for, and much as he admires, Lauraine. The ladies rise to leave the table, and pass out of the room. Before entering the drawing-room Lady Jean bends down to Lauraine.
"Will you be good enough to explain the meaning of your strange behaviour?" she says.
Lauraine turns and faces her unflinchingly. "You must excuse me from entering upon any discussion with you," she says haughtily. "You will find a note in your own apartment that will fully explain everything—not that I fancy such explanation is needed."
Lady Jean's handsome, sparkling face changes to a dull, ashy grey. She to be insulted thus, to her face, and by a woman whom she despises and hates as a rival! Her teeth clench like a vice. She is too wise to bandy words; she only turns and walks straight to her own suite of rooms, and there sees the letter spoken of. Tearing it open like a fury, she reads the few curt lines in which Lauraine states that circumstances render it advisable her visit should come to an end, and refers her, for any explanation she may deem necessary, to Sir Francis.
To say that Lady Jean is furious would but ill convey an idea of the tempest of rage, hatred, and spite aroused in her heart by the knowledge that she is discovered.
"How could she have found out, and so suddenly?" she mutters to herself. "He had no letters of mine to leave about. I was never such a fool as to write to him, and to-day she has been shut up in her rooms, and I have not met Frank. Ah, the library—I forgot that. Good heavens! could she have overheard?"
She trembles with mingled rage and shame. If Lauraine had stood before her now she could have killed her without a regret, crushed out her youth and beauty with ruthless hands and rejoicing heart; but Lauraine is not there, and Lauraine has all the triumph, and she all the shame and defeat. Like a wounded tigress she paces to and fro her room, a thousand schemes and projects flashing through her brain, and all the fierceness and savagery of her nature roused into an insensate, furious longing to revenge this insult, as she terms it, upon the woman who has dealt it to her.