Mrs. Douglas feels anything but comfortable as she meets that cold gaze. But in her heart she says:
"How fortunate that he did not come sooner—even yesterday!"
She almost shudders as she thinks of the "slip" that might have been between the costly cup she had been occupied in raising, and the lips to which it had been successfully carried. "All is safe now, though," she thinks. "But how thankful I shall be when she is fairly off. Was ever such a wedding day as this?"
And then she sails into her splendid rooms, and receives congratulations, and flutters about in graceful agitation, and feels that if ever a mother deserves the victor's crown of matrimonial success she deserves it.
Of course all danger is over now. Do not all novels end with a wedding? Are not all Society's daughters considered settled and established once the ring is on, and the rice and slippers thrown? Still, as she looks at her daughter's face, an odd little uncomfortable feeling thrills her heart. There is something so strange, so dead-looking about bright, beautiful Lauraine.
But she is married—safely married now. What is there to fear in the future, to regret in the past? Ay, what?
CHAPTER IV
A cold, wet afternoon in March. But a few days ago people believed in spring. There was abundance of sunshine, of blue sky, of tender, venturesome birds; there had been piles of violets and primroses in the flower-girls' baskets, as they moved about the London streets; a breath of genuine spring-time in the soft air; but now all was cold and bleak and drear once more, and people went back shiveringly to fires and furs, and abused the treacherous English climate to their hearts' content. The external cold and dreariness were shut out effectually in a house in fashionable Mayfair. A sort of small drawing-room, opening off the grandeur and luxury of a larger one; a room with a hundred costly knick-knacks scattered about, with velvet draperies, and filled with hothouse flowers, and over which the fire-gleams played.
A silver tea-urn stands hissing on a low table by the fire—dainty cups stand beside it. All is warm, fragrant, pleasant to the eye and the senses, and a silvery babble of women's voices adds life to the scene.