"And of her? Do you know anything about her fate?" asks Lauraine, forgetful of her own sorrows in this new interest.
"I heard she was dead. She was a vile, cruel woman. He divorced her afterwards, but what was that to me? What can anything be to me now that concerns his name, his life?" There comes a long silence. The thoughts of both are busy with sad memories. As Lauraine looks at Lady Etwynde's face she sees it is full of pain, but her eyes have a dreamy look, as the eyes of one who sees some sweet vision afar off.
"I was wrong, I suppose," she says, slowly. "A woman who loves must forget herself in that love, and I, I thought too much of my wounded pride, my lost ideal. But I have never held a thought of love for any other man. The lips that he kissed were his first, they will be his for ever. I have never forgotten; and now I am thirty years old, and my parents, as you know, are dead, and I live alone, and am looked upon as a marvel of eccentricity, and have my school of apostles and fool them to the top of their bent. Sometimes life seems a horrible travesty of all that is dignified and pure, and sometimes a jest that one laughs at and forgets. But no one knows me as I really am, save you, Lauraine. To most people I suppose I hardly seem a woman. But my true self and my lost love live a life apart, a life of dreams, sad but yet beautiful. A life that feeds itself on memories, memories that are recalled by the colours of every changing sky, the scents of leaf and flower that touch one like a sound of music. Ah! those nights, those mornings, those scenes that are the same, yet not the same, how they make one's whole soul sick with longing, and mad with regret!"
"And you have borne all this so long?" says Lauraine, wonderingly.
"Yes," she answers; "it seems long, does it not? And I have not pined away much. I don't look like a love-lorn maiden, do I? I have not gone into a decline, or fallen away to a shadow, or grown grey with sorrow, or done anything I ought to have done according to romancers. I suppose no one I know ever suspects that I have had a love-story, much less that I cherish its memory."
"Your nature must be a very constant one," says Lauraine. "You make me ashamed of myself. No wonder Keith reproaches me with unfaithfulness."
"I think fidelity is an established instinct," says Lady Etwynde. "It is very much an accident of our own natures. To me, it seems an utter impossibility to even think of caring for another man. Cyril Carlisle was my first lover; I gave him all that was in me to give. It was all my life to me. I suppose—to him—it was but another experience."
"Yours is a grand nature," says Lauraine, looking wonderingly at the calm, noble face. "You shame me for myself. If I had but kept true a little space——"
"One can never judge of another's case by one's own," answers Lady Etwynde. "No doubt you were tried, hurried into it. I know, oh! I know. You are not the first girl who has told me the same, nor will you be the last. The mothers of Society do it all for the best, doubtless. Love seems such a poor, contemptible thing in their eyes in comparison with—settlements. Oh, yes! that is so always. Perhaps they forget their own youth; one does, they say, when one outlives romance. And I suppose an 'Establishment' is better than poetry any day. They are wise, after all. Year after year the season has its martyrs. Girls are brought out and introduced with no higher aim or object set before them than a 'great marriage.' Fashion and Society expect it. I suppose it is what they were born for! Thank God! my parents were neither ambitious nor mercenary. Perhaps I too might have been over-persuaded. I don't think it likely. Still—-"
She hesitates and looks compassionately at Lauraine's sad face. "You must try and be brave, dear, and bear your life as it is. Regrets, repining, sorrowing won't make it any better. You say you are weak, but I don't think you are so weak as all that. And there is one thing I have wanted to say to you of late. You will pardon me if it seems intrusive. But, do you know you are behaving very coldly, and, I think, unwisely, towards your husband? You leave him alone, to other temptations that your presence would restrain. All these months you have not seen him, you scarcely even write with more warmth or interest than you do to your steward; and, after all, he is your husband. Nothing can alter that; and he loved you very dearly, and no doubt he does still. Can you not see that your duty to him demands even more than the sacrifice you have already made? I know it is hard, terribly hard. You say there is no sympathy, no comprehension between you, and your heart is aching with this forbidden love, and he must seem in a way hateful; but you were not honest with him quite, if you promised to marry him, and yet held back your heart. You see what I mean?"