CHAPTER VIn the dressing-room of her Park Lane mansion a woman stands dressed for the evening.Her face is lovely, her toilet exquisite, a rain of diamonds seems to glitter about her; but there is no gladness in the eyes that gaze at their own reflection, and an unnatural gravity and sadness seem to sit on the white brow and round the soft young lips.It is the face of Lauraine—Lady Vavasour.A maid enters with a bouquet and a note, and gives them to her. "Sir Francis desired me to say he was waiting, my lady," she says respectfully."I will be down immediately. You can take my cloak," answers her mistress.The maid leaves the room, and Laura opens the note and reads the few lines it contains. Her face does not change except to grow even sadder for a moment. Then she tears up the letter, and taking the flowers in her hand, sweeps slowly away. She moves across the richly carpeted corridor, and enters another room facing her own. It is dimly lighted, and all its draperies are pure white, and the furniture of satinwood. In one corner stands a little cot, the lace curtains looped back with pale azure ribbons. A woman rises at her entrance, and stands up respectfully. Lauraine passes her, and goes over to the little bed and looks down with eyes full of love unutterable at its inmate.A child lies there asleep. Soft, dusky rings of hair curl round the broad, white brow—the cheeks are flushed like a rose—the tiny scarlet mouth is half open—the little hands lie outside the snowy coverlet. Lauraine's face grows transfigured as she looks on that baby form; such love—such rapture—such pure, holy, exquisite joy irradiates it! She stoops down and presses her lips to the baby brow—takes one long, idolizing look at the cherubic loveliness that is her dearest earthly treasure, and then whispers some parting injunctions to the nurse and leaves the room."How long you have been! What a deuce of a time you women do take to put your gowns on," grumbles her husband, as he meets her at the bottom of the stairs. "The horses have been standing out there in the cold for more than half an hour."Lauraine makes a sign to her maid to put on her wraps, and then follows her husband out to the carriage. He has not looked at her—he has not noticed one detail of the exquisite toilette—his voice in addressing her is harsh and impatient, and they have been married but two years. Yet the coldness and indifference she now receives is ten thousand times preferable, she thinks, to the frantic passion that he had once bestowed. He had been mad to have her, and he had won her! Now—well, now that infatuation looked as absurd as it had once been imperative. It is a man's nature; it always has been and always will be so.Lauraine too feels strangely changed. She seems to have grown cold, hard, indifferent to everything. These two years seem like ten. This is her first season in London since she married, and she looks upon it as a duty enforced, and with not one throb of pleasure or anticipation. She is young, rich, and very lovely; but she carries a heavy heart within that beautiful bosom, and knows that the one great error of her life is ever demanding compensation.Six months ago she and Keith Athelstone met again. He had gone back to New York after her marriage, to settle his affairs, and for eighteen months she had neither seen nor heard anything of him. When they met in Rome she had been startled and afraid of the change wrought in so brief a time. He looked years older. The bright, genial, sunny temper that had given him so great a charm was now sullen, uncertain, and bitter. He was restless, extravagant, and capricious. Much that she had heard of him pained and annoyed her deeply; but she scarcely dared remonstrate for fear of being met with a sneer or a reproach. Her husband took an unaccountable fancy to the young fellow, and had him constantly at their house; but it frightened Lauraine to see the hatred and contempt that at times flashed out in Keith's eyes and voice against the man who called him friend. No word of the past—no allusion to that wedding-morning of hers—ever passed between the young man and herself. She almost hoped he had forgotten his boyish passion—would be content to accept the friendship she had once proffered him, and he had rejected so scornfully.For herself nothing seemed to signify much now. The whole tenderness of her nature spent itself on her child.If she could have had her way, she would have liked to live in the quiet old Northumbrian house which was her husband's, and there given herself exclusively up to the care and teaching of her boy. But such a wild idea, was of course, scouted and ridiculed.Her husband was proud of her in a way—proud of the sparkling beauty, the dainty grace, the mind and manners of the woman he had made his wife. She would never be fast or vulgar, or think only of conquests and admiration, and drag his name through the mire of scandal. No; she would always besafe—that he felt, and if he had grown tired of her he was determined that the world should see and admire her, and applaud his choice. It would gratify his vanity, just as it had done in Rome, where she had been courted and worshipped and eulogized everywhere as "Lady Lauraine."The carriage rolls smoothly and swiftly on. Lauraine leans back, with her eyes gazing dreamily out at the lighted streets. Her husband breaks the silence at last."I want you to be specially civil to Lady Jean," he says abruptly. "You were very stand-offish when she called on you the other day. She's the most popular woman in London, and the prettiest. You two ought to be friends.""I don't like her," answers Lauraine coldly."Don't like her!" he sneers. "No, of course not. That's just like a woman. The moment a man praises one of your own sex to you, it's quite sufficient reason for you to dislike her. Pray, what's your objection?"Lauraine colours faintly."She is loud and fast. She ridicules every good and honest feeling, and I think she is very malicious.""The secret of her success perhaps," laughs her husband. "People are afraid of her sharp tongue.Tant mieux. But she is at all events a woman one would not get tired of. Few know how to make themselves more agreeable.""To men, perhaps.""Well, that's paying us a great compliment. A woman making herself agreeable to women is taking a great deal of trouble for no purpose unless, of course, they have theentréewhere she has not. But Lady Jean goes everywhere.""And Lady Jean's husband?" asks Lauraine.Sir Francis laughs. "Well, one doesn't see much of him certainly. But he's worth nearly a million, for all that. The earl wouldn't have let his daughter marry him if he hadn't been.""Was Lady Jean poor?""Very poor. The Earl of Killery had six daughters. She was the youngest, and the only one who has married. She's been married six years now.""You knew her before—before——" hesitates Lauraine."Before I married you? Oh, yes. We were very good friends always. That's why I hope you and she will hit it off. She'll be of great use to you."Lauraine is silent. In her own mind she thinks she shall never be able to "hit it off," as Sir Francis expresses it. She and Lady Jean are totally opposite in many respects, and she has that instinctive antipathy to her which a pure and high-principled woman often conceives for one whose morals are lax, whose nature is coarse, whose views, tastes and opinions are utterly antagonistic to her own.The carriage stops at last. They get out and are marshalled up a crowded staircase and into yet more crowded rooms. Lady Jean Saloman receives them cordially. She looks radiant. If not a positively beautiful woman she at least is a woman who always contrives to make herself immediately noticed even amidst beauty. She is very tall; dresses superbly: wears jewels fit for an empress, and is too much a woman of the world not to know the worth of popularity.Her own birth and breeding were irreproachable, and she could begrande dameto the tips of her toes when she pleased. But when the part did not suit, she varied it according to her own fancy. She was not a young woman now—that is to say, she was on the wrong side of thirty; but she was handsome and dashing-looking, and had a host of admirers, and did pretty much as she liked with her husband, who was a dark Jewish-looking man, rarely seen in her drawing-rooms, but known to have carried many wonderful speculations to a successful issue, and to have so much money that even her wildest extravagances could be indulged without fear of consequences.Lady Jean was on the very highest pinnacle of social success at present, and the novelty amused her, though the fact of being constantlyen grande tenuewas rather a bore, and there was a dash of Bohemianism in her character, due to her Irish blood, which would have vent occasionally. The said element, however, was kept carefully out of sight of the very great and exclusive personages who received her as one of themselves. She slipped into her two characters as occasion demanded, and played them so skilfully that her respective audiences applauded each with rapture, and took each as the real thing.Those outside that magic pale of "exclusiveness" sighed enviously as they saw her leave their ranks from time to time, and soar upwards to that purer and rarer stratum of the social atmosphere which their lungs were deemed unfit to breathe. "We are quite as good as she," they would murmur discontentedly.And so they doubtless were, only they had not learnt her secret—the secret of keeping on good terms with Society, and yet indulging in a hundred little frolicsome escapades by way of variety, without offending the strait-laced prejudices and high-toned morality of the one set, or debarring herself from the questionable amusements of the other.To-night Lady Jean is very gracious, very affable, very dignified; her rooms are thronged with great personages. A list of nothing but titles will fill the pages of theCourt Journalthat describes her "reception" to-morrow, and she feels that she is a person of much consequence. Lady Vavasour looks at her with more curiosity than she has yet evinced. Her husband's words have aroused her interest.Lady Jean is attired in some wonderful combination of deep ruby and old gold that suits her dark beauty to perfection. Lauraine gazes at her with a sort of wonder. It has never struck her before that the woman is so marvellously handsome.They pass on with the rest of the crowd after a few words. In one of the rooms a great singer is singing. Lauraine stands and listens. Some one comes up to her and offers his hand. She just glances up and smiles as she takes it. Neither of them speaks. Only two eager blue eyes take in every detail of her dress and appearance, and give so glad a welcome in their glance that perhaps it is as well she does not see it.The song is over. The crowd move about. Keith Athelstone bends close to Lauraine. "Let me find you a seat," he says. "These rooms are stifling."Lauraine nods and takes his arm. Her husband has gone back to the staircase and—Lady Jean."I hardly know any one here," she says at last. "It is the first time I have come to the house.""Is it?" answers Keith, rather indifferently. "There are heaps of big swells here, I believe. Pity Mrs. Bradshaw Woollffe can't be among them. How delighted she would be!""How long do you stay with her?" asked Lauraine."I scarcely know. I am looking out for a set of rooms; but I haven't found anything I like yet.""Are you so hard to please?""I don't think so. But I must have lots of room and something green to look at. I wonder if I dare ask your assistance in the furnishing line. I'm afraid I shall make an awful muddle of it."Lauraine laughs. "Are you going in for the æsthetic style—peacock-blue, and sage-green and yellow? Oh, yes—I shall be delighted to help you. We'll drive to Morris's and select things together."Together! His heart gives a quick throb as he hears that word. He wonders whether she has forgotten. He feels a little impatient of this calm friendliness with which she always treats him. She ignores the past so utterly that at times he feels impelled to say or do something desperate, if only to awaken her from that calm, and know that she can feel still.The attraction she had had for him is potent as ever. All his rage and indignation had not killed it—the barrier in his path seemed but to rouse it to fresh life when they met again.No woman in the world was to him what Lauraine was. No woman ever would be, he felt assured. Had he been wise he would have shunned her presence so long as he knew it could exercise its old potent witchery.But who is wise that loves?"She is quite safe," he would tell himself restlessly. "And for myself—if it hurts, it is my own fault. I must see her sometimes."He had grown to look upon Lauraine as martyred to her mother's selfishness. He knew she had never cared for her husband. He saw that even in this short space of time they were drifting slowly—surely apart."And I would have made her so happy!" he thought to himself in those hours of solitude when the maddening recollection of her face was always before him.He almost hated her at such times; hated her because he could not forget her, and all his riches seemed nothing in comparison with just—her love.She was quite unsuspicious as yet. She thought he must have got over his boyish infatuation long since, and that their friendship was as real to him as to her. He was careful enough not to undeceive her, for he dreaded above all the sentence of banishment she would inevitably pronounce. She had grown so much colder and prouder since her marriage, he thought.The seat is found, and side by side they sit, talking of a hundred different things that for them have a common interest. To Lauraine it is the most natural thing in the world that Keith should be beside her, and she can always talk to him as she can to no one else. Yet there is that about her which keeps all dangerous allusions in check, which sometimes chills and sometimes awes the wild, hot, young heart beating so restlessly by her side. He tries a hundred times to speak, and yet—he dares not. "She would never forgive," he thinks to himself. "It would seem almost an insult now."For he knows that there is one tie which sanctifies her heart, and sets her far above the touch and fear of a selfish passion. It is her love for her child."Your wife and her old playfellow seem devoted to each other," remarks Lady Jean, as she leans on Sir Francis Vavasour's arm, and makes the tour of her splendid rooms.He looks carelessly at the couple in question. They are sitting in an alcove, the soft hues of the hangings and the rich tints of flowers framing them in with a glow of colour. Keith is bending over Lauraine; he holds her bouquet in his hand, and toys restlessly with the fragrant blossoms. Her face is softly flushed, the long dark lashes sweep her cheek, a little smile, half tender, half sad, plays about her lips."What a handsome couple they would have made," continues Lady Jean blandly. "Just seem suited for each other. You ought to feel flattered,mon ami, that you carried the day.""Pshaw! they are like brother and sister," mutters Sir Francis impatiently."Are they? How very charming! Only brothers and sisters as a rule don't seem quite so devoted to each other. But, of course, the relationship and the 'seeming' it are two very different things. Do you know, I think your wife is very beautiful.""You are very good to say so."Lady Jean laughs. "My flattery is quite sincere. I really admire her very much. She is a little too grave and serious, perhaps, but that is a fault on the right side. There is too much fastness and vulgarity in society nowadays. A quiet woman is quite refreshing.""Lauraine never used to be grave and serious," Sir Francis remarks somewhat moodily. "She was one of the merriest and most amusing girls I ever met.""Ah!" observes his companion sententiously. "Thatwas before she married you. Somehow marriage does alter some women amazingly."
In the dressing-room of her Park Lane mansion a woman stands dressed for the evening.
Her face is lovely, her toilet exquisite, a rain of diamonds seems to glitter about her; but there is no gladness in the eyes that gaze at their own reflection, and an unnatural gravity and sadness seem to sit on the white brow and round the soft young lips.
It is the face of Lauraine—Lady Vavasour.
A maid enters with a bouquet and a note, and gives them to her. "Sir Francis desired me to say he was waiting, my lady," she says respectfully.
"I will be down immediately. You can take my cloak," answers her mistress.
The maid leaves the room, and Laura opens the note and reads the few lines it contains. Her face does not change except to grow even sadder for a moment. Then she tears up the letter, and taking the flowers in her hand, sweeps slowly away. She moves across the richly carpeted corridor, and enters another room facing her own. It is dimly lighted, and all its draperies are pure white, and the furniture of satinwood. In one corner stands a little cot, the lace curtains looped back with pale azure ribbons. A woman rises at her entrance, and stands up respectfully. Lauraine passes her, and goes over to the little bed and looks down with eyes full of love unutterable at its inmate.
A child lies there asleep. Soft, dusky rings of hair curl round the broad, white brow—the cheeks are flushed like a rose—the tiny scarlet mouth is half open—the little hands lie outside the snowy coverlet. Lauraine's face grows transfigured as she looks on that baby form; such love—such rapture—such pure, holy, exquisite joy irradiates it! She stoops down and presses her lips to the baby brow—takes one long, idolizing look at the cherubic loveliness that is her dearest earthly treasure, and then whispers some parting injunctions to the nurse and leaves the room.
"How long you have been! What a deuce of a time you women do take to put your gowns on," grumbles her husband, as he meets her at the bottom of the stairs. "The horses have been standing out there in the cold for more than half an hour."
Lauraine makes a sign to her maid to put on her wraps, and then follows her husband out to the carriage. He has not looked at her—he has not noticed one detail of the exquisite toilette—his voice in addressing her is harsh and impatient, and they have been married but two years. Yet the coldness and indifference she now receives is ten thousand times preferable, she thinks, to the frantic passion that he had once bestowed. He had been mad to have her, and he had won her! Now—well, now that infatuation looked as absurd as it had once been imperative. It is a man's nature; it always has been and always will be so.
Lauraine too feels strangely changed. She seems to have grown cold, hard, indifferent to everything. These two years seem like ten. This is her first season in London since she married, and she looks upon it as a duty enforced, and with not one throb of pleasure or anticipation. She is young, rich, and very lovely; but she carries a heavy heart within that beautiful bosom, and knows that the one great error of her life is ever demanding compensation.
Six months ago she and Keith Athelstone met again. He had gone back to New York after her marriage, to settle his affairs, and for eighteen months she had neither seen nor heard anything of him. When they met in Rome she had been startled and afraid of the change wrought in so brief a time. He looked years older. The bright, genial, sunny temper that had given him so great a charm was now sullen, uncertain, and bitter. He was restless, extravagant, and capricious. Much that she had heard of him pained and annoyed her deeply; but she scarcely dared remonstrate for fear of being met with a sneer or a reproach. Her husband took an unaccountable fancy to the young fellow, and had him constantly at their house; but it frightened Lauraine to see the hatred and contempt that at times flashed out in Keith's eyes and voice against the man who called him friend. No word of the past—no allusion to that wedding-morning of hers—ever passed between the young man and herself. She almost hoped he had forgotten his boyish passion—would be content to accept the friendship she had once proffered him, and he had rejected so scornfully.
For herself nothing seemed to signify much now. The whole tenderness of her nature spent itself on her child.
If she could have had her way, she would have liked to live in the quiet old Northumbrian house which was her husband's, and there given herself exclusively up to the care and teaching of her boy. But such a wild idea, was of course, scouted and ridiculed.
Her husband was proud of her in a way—proud of the sparkling beauty, the dainty grace, the mind and manners of the woman he had made his wife. She would never be fast or vulgar, or think only of conquests and admiration, and drag his name through the mire of scandal. No; she would always besafe—that he felt, and if he had grown tired of her he was determined that the world should see and admire her, and applaud his choice. It would gratify his vanity, just as it had done in Rome, where she had been courted and worshipped and eulogized everywhere as "Lady Lauraine."
The carriage rolls smoothly and swiftly on. Lauraine leans back, with her eyes gazing dreamily out at the lighted streets. Her husband breaks the silence at last.
"I want you to be specially civil to Lady Jean," he says abruptly. "You were very stand-offish when she called on you the other day. She's the most popular woman in London, and the prettiest. You two ought to be friends."
"I don't like her," answers Lauraine coldly.
"Don't like her!" he sneers. "No, of course not. That's just like a woman. The moment a man praises one of your own sex to you, it's quite sufficient reason for you to dislike her. Pray, what's your objection?"
Lauraine colours faintly.
"She is loud and fast. She ridicules every good and honest feeling, and I think she is very malicious."
"The secret of her success perhaps," laughs her husband. "People are afraid of her sharp tongue.Tant mieux. But she is at all events a woman one would not get tired of. Few know how to make themselves more agreeable."
"To men, perhaps."
"Well, that's paying us a great compliment. A woman making herself agreeable to women is taking a great deal of trouble for no purpose unless, of course, they have theentréewhere she has not. But Lady Jean goes everywhere."
"And Lady Jean's husband?" asks Lauraine.
Sir Francis laughs. "Well, one doesn't see much of him certainly. But he's worth nearly a million, for all that. The earl wouldn't have let his daughter marry him if he hadn't been."
"Was Lady Jean poor?"
"Very poor. The Earl of Killery had six daughters. She was the youngest, and the only one who has married. She's been married six years now."
"You knew her before—before——" hesitates Lauraine.
"Before I married you? Oh, yes. We were very good friends always. That's why I hope you and she will hit it off. She'll be of great use to you."
Lauraine is silent. In her own mind she thinks she shall never be able to "hit it off," as Sir Francis expresses it. She and Lady Jean are totally opposite in many respects, and she has that instinctive antipathy to her which a pure and high-principled woman often conceives for one whose morals are lax, whose nature is coarse, whose views, tastes and opinions are utterly antagonistic to her own.
The carriage stops at last. They get out and are marshalled up a crowded staircase and into yet more crowded rooms. Lady Jean Saloman receives them cordially. She looks radiant. If not a positively beautiful woman she at least is a woman who always contrives to make herself immediately noticed even amidst beauty. She is very tall; dresses superbly: wears jewels fit for an empress, and is too much a woman of the world not to know the worth of popularity.
Her own birth and breeding were irreproachable, and she could begrande dameto the tips of her toes when she pleased. But when the part did not suit, she varied it according to her own fancy. She was not a young woman now—that is to say, she was on the wrong side of thirty; but she was handsome and dashing-looking, and had a host of admirers, and did pretty much as she liked with her husband, who was a dark Jewish-looking man, rarely seen in her drawing-rooms, but known to have carried many wonderful speculations to a successful issue, and to have so much money that even her wildest extravagances could be indulged without fear of consequences.
Lady Jean was on the very highest pinnacle of social success at present, and the novelty amused her, though the fact of being constantlyen grande tenuewas rather a bore, and there was a dash of Bohemianism in her character, due to her Irish blood, which would have vent occasionally. The said element, however, was kept carefully out of sight of the very great and exclusive personages who received her as one of themselves. She slipped into her two characters as occasion demanded, and played them so skilfully that her respective audiences applauded each with rapture, and took each as the real thing.
Those outside that magic pale of "exclusiveness" sighed enviously as they saw her leave their ranks from time to time, and soar upwards to that purer and rarer stratum of the social atmosphere which their lungs were deemed unfit to breathe. "We are quite as good as she," they would murmur discontentedly.
And so they doubtless were, only they had not learnt her secret—the secret of keeping on good terms with Society, and yet indulging in a hundred little frolicsome escapades by way of variety, without offending the strait-laced prejudices and high-toned morality of the one set, or debarring herself from the questionable amusements of the other.
To-night Lady Jean is very gracious, very affable, very dignified; her rooms are thronged with great personages. A list of nothing but titles will fill the pages of theCourt Journalthat describes her "reception" to-morrow, and she feels that she is a person of much consequence. Lady Vavasour looks at her with more curiosity than she has yet evinced. Her husband's words have aroused her interest.
Lady Jean is attired in some wonderful combination of deep ruby and old gold that suits her dark beauty to perfection. Lauraine gazes at her with a sort of wonder. It has never struck her before that the woman is so marvellously handsome.
They pass on with the rest of the crowd after a few words. In one of the rooms a great singer is singing. Lauraine stands and listens. Some one comes up to her and offers his hand. She just glances up and smiles as she takes it. Neither of them speaks. Only two eager blue eyes take in every detail of her dress and appearance, and give so glad a welcome in their glance that perhaps it is as well she does not see it.
The song is over. The crowd move about. Keith Athelstone bends close to Lauraine. "Let me find you a seat," he says. "These rooms are stifling."
Lauraine nods and takes his arm. Her husband has gone back to the staircase and—Lady Jean.
"I hardly know any one here," she says at last. "It is the first time I have come to the house."
"Is it?" answers Keith, rather indifferently. "There are heaps of big swells here, I believe. Pity Mrs. Bradshaw Woollffe can't be among them. How delighted she would be!"
"How long do you stay with her?" asked Lauraine.
"I scarcely know. I am looking out for a set of rooms; but I haven't found anything I like yet."
"Are you so hard to please?"
"I don't think so. But I must have lots of room and something green to look at. I wonder if I dare ask your assistance in the furnishing line. I'm afraid I shall make an awful muddle of it."
Lauraine laughs. "Are you going in for the æsthetic style—peacock-blue, and sage-green and yellow? Oh, yes—I shall be delighted to help you. We'll drive to Morris's and select things together."
Together! His heart gives a quick throb as he hears that word. He wonders whether she has forgotten. He feels a little impatient of this calm friendliness with which she always treats him. She ignores the past so utterly that at times he feels impelled to say or do something desperate, if only to awaken her from that calm, and know that she can feel still.
The attraction she had had for him is potent as ever. All his rage and indignation had not killed it—the barrier in his path seemed but to rouse it to fresh life when they met again.
No woman in the world was to him what Lauraine was. No woman ever would be, he felt assured. Had he been wise he would have shunned her presence so long as he knew it could exercise its old potent witchery.
But who is wise that loves?
"She is quite safe," he would tell himself restlessly. "And for myself—if it hurts, it is my own fault. I must see her sometimes."
He had grown to look upon Lauraine as martyred to her mother's selfishness. He knew she had never cared for her husband. He saw that even in this short space of time they were drifting slowly—surely apart.
"And I would have made her so happy!" he thought to himself in those hours of solitude when the maddening recollection of her face was always before him.
He almost hated her at such times; hated her because he could not forget her, and all his riches seemed nothing in comparison with just—her love.
She was quite unsuspicious as yet. She thought he must have got over his boyish infatuation long since, and that their friendship was as real to him as to her. He was careful enough not to undeceive her, for he dreaded above all the sentence of banishment she would inevitably pronounce. She had grown so much colder and prouder since her marriage, he thought.
The seat is found, and side by side they sit, talking of a hundred different things that for them have a common interest. To Lauraine it is the most natural thing in the world that Keith should be beside her, and she can always talk to him as she can to no one else. Yet there is that about her which keeps all dangerous allusions in check, which sometimes chills and sometimes awes the wild, hot, young heart beating so restlessly by her side. He tries a hundred times to speak, and yet—he dares not. "She would never forgive," he thinks to himself. "It would seem almost an insult now."
For he knows that there is one tie which sanctifies her heart, and sets her far above the touch and fear of a selfish passion. It is her love for her child.
"Your wife and her old playfellow seem devoted to each other," remarks Lady Jean, as she leans on Sir Francis Vavasour's arm, and makes the tour of her splendid rooms.
He looks carelessly at the couple in question. They are sitting in an alcove, the soft hues of the hangings and the rich tints of flowers framing them in with a glow of colour. Keith is bending over Lauraine; he holds her bouquet in his hand, and toys restlessly with the fragrant blossoms. Her face is softly flushed, the long dark lashes sweep her cheek, a little smile, half tender, half sad, plays about her lips.
"What a handsome couple they would have made," continues Lady Jean blandly. "Just seem suited for each other. You ought to feel flattered,mon ami, that you carried the day."
"Pshaw! they are like brother and sister," mutters Sir Francis impatiently.
"Are they? How very charming! Only brothers and sisters as a rule don't seem quite so devoted to each other. But, of course, the relationship and the 'seeming' it are two very different things. Do you know, I think your wife is very beautiful."
"You are very good to say so."
Lady Jean laughs. "My flattery is quite sincere. I really admire her very much. She is a little too grave and serious, perhaps, but that is a fault on the right side. There is too much fastness and vulgarity in society nowadays. A quiet woman is quite refreshing."
"Lauraine never used to be grave and serious," Sir Francis remarks somewhat moodily. "She was one of the merriest and most amusing girls I ever met."
"Ah!" observes his companion sententiously. "Thatwas before she married you. Somehow marriage does alter some women amazingly."