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 be _safe_--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 the _entrée_ where 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 be
_grande dame_ to 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
constantly _en grande tenue_ was 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 the _Court Journal_ that 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. "_That_ was before she
married you. Somehow marriage does alter some women amazingly."