Late one afternoon she and Lady Etwynde are returning from a drive to a little village some two miles distant. The sun is just setting above the forest heights, there is alternate light and gloom among the heavy foliage, those beautiful shades of green and gold that make up so much of the charm of a wood. Lady Etwynde is driving rather quickly, and the road is narrow. Before them she sees the figure of a horseman proceeding leisurely along. At the near approach of the ponies' rapid trot he draws his horse aside to make room. Lauraine leaning back in the little low carriage, gives a careless glance up as she passes, then all the pallor of her face flushes deepest scarlet; she starts forward with an exclamation of amazement. Lady Etwynde notices it, and reins in the ponies. "Mr. Athelstone! Is it possible?" she says.
In astonishment quite as genuine, Keith draws the bridle, and bends towards the two figures.
"What a strange meeting," he says, as he shakes hands first with Lauraine, then with Lady Etwynde.
"I thought you were in London," Lauraine says quickly. After one wild leap of joy her heart seems to grow still and cold with a great dread. What evil fate, she wonders, has thrown him across her path now?
They are all too genuinely astonished to be embarrassed, and Keith proceeds to explain how he has been mountaineering for the last month in the Tyrol district; how his headquarters at present are that very little village they have just visited; and how he has ridden over to Erlsbach from idle curiosity, to see what the place is like. Of course there remains nothing for it but to invite him to the Kaiser Hof, and an hour later the trio are sitting at dinner, the table drawn close by the open window, and the fresh pine-scented air blowing in cool and soft from the mountains. Keith and Lauraine talk very little to each other. The brunt of the conversation falls on Lady Etwynde, and she in no way objects. Keith has always been a favourite of hers, and they have many sharp and witty arguments, while that pale, grave figure in the soft draperies listens and smiles, and feels at once disturbed and restless, and yet glad.
Sooner or later they would meet. She had known that always, but had never dreamt of it being so soon, or so strangely.
Somehow in life the meetings we expect never do take place as we expect them. We may rehearse our little scenes as carefully as we please, we may arrange our looks, our words, the very tones of our voices, but when the actual rencontre does occur it is sure to be utterly different, and the carefully-arranged programme is never carried out.
It is so with Lauraine now. She has sometimes longed, sometimes dreaded to meet him, but always imagined it at some distant time and in some totally different manner; and now Keith is sitting at her table, her own guest, smiling, talking, looking at her to all appearance as unconcerned and forgetful as if that "garden scene" had never been enacted.
He is a better actor than herself, and he determines to be it. She shows that she is troubled, pained, perplexed. He ignores everything that might lead to that past, is careless, cynical, indifferent as of yore; but all the time his heart is beating with tumultuous pain; he is thinking how sadly altered she is, how changed from the bright, beautiful Lauraine of his boyhood, and yet dearer to him in her sufferings and sorrow than in any years that are past. It is hard work to keep down the thoughts that are thronging, the love that is leaping, the joy that is thrilling his every sense; but he knows it must be done, and he succeeds in doing it and in deceiving Lauraine. The cloth is removed. The soft dusk settles on the pretty quiet scene without. Lady Etwynde, who dislikes a glare of light, blows out nearly all the illumination of candles in the room, and they sit there by the window watching the stars come out one by one, talking less now, but with something grave and earnest in the talk that it has lacked before.
At last Lady Etwynde rises, and, saying she has letters to write, moves away to a little inner room, partitioned off by curtains from the one where they have all been sitting. It is solitude, yet not solitude. The sense of being together, the knowledge that their low tones are unheard, is just restrained by the feeling that another person is close at hand. Keith is silent for some moments, then bends towards Lauraine.