"I am his wife," she says simply.
Day after day passes wearily, slowly by. Then comes a letter from Lady Etwynde.
"It is all true," she writes; "Keith has been shot, and all for some disgraceful scrape in which that woman is mixed up. But he is not at her house; he is in his own, and Lady Jean has gone off with the man. Every one is talking of it. Keith is in the utmost danger; but if skill and care can do anything, I do not despair of him yet. The shot was within a hair's-breadth of piercing his left lung. He knows me, and I whispered to him I was here by your desire. You should have seen the look in the boy's eyes: I feel so sorry for him; he is so young, and he lies there in this awful state, and I know his heart is aching for sight of you. Lauraine, I see that woman's scheme now. She wanted you to make a false step, one that would have ruined you for ever. Had you left your husband's house to come to Keith it would have looked as if you had fled to your lover. Sir Francis would have been justified in doing anything. But how you had the courage, the self-denial, to act as you have done puzzles me. I could not have believed it, though I thought I knew you so well. But, as I have told you before, hard as duty is, it brings its own reward, and God will surely bless you with peace at last."
Lauraine reads the letter with streaming eyes, sitting there beside her husband's couch. Her heart is wrung with agony, her eyes are full of anguish unutterable.
"Duty," she sighs. "Ah, what a poor cold thing duty looks," and she falls on her knees and prays for the young life she loves, and for that other life trembling now in the balance. As she rises from her knees her husband turns wearily on his pillow. His eyes unclose, and with a faint gleam of consciousness look at her.
"Lauraine!" he murmurs.
She leans over him, and touches his fevered hands. "Yes; it is I," she says.
"You—and here; where—where——"
He can say no more. She stays him with a hasty gesture. "You must not talk, it is forbidden. It is enough that I heard you were ill—that I came."
"And she—Jean?"