CHAPTER I

It is Lauraine Douglas' wedding-day.

A delicious gleam of sunshine streams through the curtained windows—flickers over the dainty arrangements of the toilet-table, loses itself in the white wonders of lace, linen, and embroidery strewed about in different directions, and finally wanders to a dusky head on the pillows, and plays at hide and seek over the closed eyelids of a very lovely face.

The eyelids open—quite suddenly, quite wakefully—not with any half-and-half preparation—any symptom of sleepiness.

The inquisitive sunbeam has done its work, and retreats bashfully now as two white arms are thrown suddenly up and placed beneath the girl's head, and resting thus she takes a survey of the mysterious garments, the pretty room, the aspect of the weather, as promised by the wealth of prodigal sunlight, and, finally, the clock on the opposite chimney-piece.

"My wedding-day!"—so ran her thoughts.

"Only a few hours more and I am Lauraine Douglas no longer! Only a few hours and the old life and the things of it are done and past for ever—for ever. How strange it seems to think of that now! ... My wedding-day! ... How different I thought it would be once. How different I thought I should feel. Oh, Keith! Keith! what an old, far-away dream that looks. I suppose you have long ago forgotten it. And yet how we loved each other ... you and I! A boy-and-girl fancy, my mother calls it. Well, perhaps, it was; it is long enough since I heard from him, and I suppose he has long forgotten me. I wonder if he has made the fortune he spoke of yet? But what on earth makes me think of these things to-day, of all days? ... And so it really is my wedding-day at last! I wonder how most girls feel on their wedding-day! I can't say I feel in any way different—no stir, or flutter, or anticipation of any description. I am glad it is going to be fine, and how nice to be able to wear real orange blossoms! Sir Francis was very good to send them. I

wonder if I shall ever think of him and call him anything but Sir Francis. Somehow I never can. I wish he was not so old—old, at least, for me, and I wish he did not love me in quite such a fierce, wild fashion. I seem to have been quite swept off my feet by the current of his passion and my mother's persuasions.... After all, I suppose one must be married some time or other ... only—only——"

She breaks off with a sudden sigh, and sits up in the bed, pushing off the thick, dusky hair from her brows with an impatient gesture.

"It is no use deceiving myself. I am going to be married and I hate the thought, and how I have been dragged into it I scarcely know. Sometimes I think I should never have yielded.... How oddly one drifts into things! ... And Sir Francis is so infatuated, and it seemed no use saying 'No.' I wish he were not so jealous. I can't understand the feeling myself. I wonder what it's like? Not pleasant by any means, if I am to judge by my future lord and master. Will he be my master, I wonder? How I should hate to be ordered about, and kept in check, and ruled! Mamma is bad enough, in all conscience; but, still, I have managed to get my own way with her, pretty often. How she has badgered me about this marriage, and what a desperate hurry they have been in to get it off! Heigho! only a month since I bartered my liberty for—for—ahem!—shall I go over all 'the good gifts that crown me queen' of this much-sought-after baronet? Unencumbered estates, magnificent income, ancient family—pooh! how sickening it is! After all, what do I care for these

things? One comfort is, I go to him heart-whole. No sentiments in the background, no lovers to moan and fret over. I wonder if I am really cold-hearted, or if I never shall fall in love? Gracious! what am I saying? That folly must be over after 11.30 to-day. I suppose the nearest approach to it was that boy-and-girl romance with Keith. Poor old Keith! What a nice boy he was, and what a dare-devil, impetuous, headstrong sort of fellow! No milk-and-water lover he—a regular torrent of impetuosity, bearing one along, whether one would or no. I suppose he has forgotten me though, and no wonder. How rude mamma was to him, and how delighted when he turned his back on the Old World and went off to the New! I suppose if I ever see him again he will be a regular Yankee, and talk like that dreadful woman, Mrs. Bradshaw B. Woollffe, as she calls herself. And she will be at the breakfast, after all! Mamma would ask her. Heavens! how she does worship money! But I suppose that comes of having had so little all her life."

A little sleepy yawn comes in here, then the pretty head turns away from the sunlight, and nestles itself among the pillows again. But it is no use to woo sleep any longer. The eyes remain open, and the brain is busy with thoughts, until at eight o'clock a knock at the door is followed by the entrance of a maid, with hot water and letters. The girl sits up and stretches out her hands for the latter—just two. She holds them a moment, and looks hesitatingly at the superscription.

"The last time I shall see that name," she murmurs, half aloud, as she reads the "Miss Douglas" that has been her nomenclature for twenty years of her life. "Heigho! it makes me sad to think of it, after all.... Yes, Jane, draw up the blind. A fine morning? Well, of course, I can see that. No, I don't want anything more. You can go till I ring."

Left alone, she opens the letters. The first is apparently of little interest, and is tossed carelessly aside. The second—at the first line she starts and flushes as red as a June rose; then with eager eyes reads on with devouring speed till the end. It is not a very long letter, but it seems to agitate her in no small degree.

"How strange!" she says. "After all these years—and to-day, of all days! What on earth am I to do?"

She grows very white, and for some moments leans back on the snowy pillows, with her breath coming fitfully and unevenly, and her eyes looking sad and troubled. Then with a great effort she rises and puts the letter aside, and proceeds with her morning toilette.

She is standing before the mirror in a loose white dressing-gown, her long rich hair hanging loosely about her, when the door opens and a lady enters.

A very handsome, stately lady, with sufficient likeness to the girl to suggest their relationship; but the soft curved lips of the young face are thin and cold in the older one, and the eyes, though brilliant, still lack the softness and tenderness that give so great a charm to those of Lauraine.

"Up and dressed, my darling!" she says, in clear, sweet tones. Then she comes near to the girl and kisses her effusively on both cheeks. "Will you come to my boudoir for breakfast?" she continues. "I made Henriette dress my hair first, so that you can have all her attention afterwards. What a barbarous custom to have weddings so early in the day! You look very well, dear; just a trifle pale, but that is quite correct for a bride." Then she kisses her again, and Lauraine submits to the caresses with a sort of passive contempt. There is no gladness on her face, nor in her eyes, and she has certainly grown very pale, but the pallor only makes the beautiful eyes more wistful, and the sweet red lips more exquisite in contrast.

The girl is tall and slender, with delicately-cut features, and a wealth of dusky gold-brown hair, and a clear, creamy skin, that shows every trace of the coursing blood as it flows beneath. It warms suddenly now, with a brilliant flush, as she meets her mother's eyes and listens to her words. The white slender hand moves to the toilet-table, and takes from amidst its glittering array a letter lying there.

"Mother," she says suddenly, "whom do you think I have heard from this morning? An old friend of ours."

Mrs. Douglas looks a little startled just for a moment. Then she smiles sweetly.

"I am a bad hand at guessing, love. Pray tell me, if it is of any importance."

Lauraine looks full at her, still holding the letter in her hand. "It is from—Keith," she says calmly.

"From Mr. Athelstone!" remarks Mrs. Douglas calmly, but a little nervous agitation is visible on her face. "Dear me! I thought he had long forgotten us!"

"So did I," answers Lauraine, glancing for an instant at the superscription.

"But he has not. You never told me that he had written to you, mamma, three months ago."

"To me! Did he really?" and Mrs. Douglas colours ever so little. "I forgot all about it. Yes, now you mention it, he did write me—some nonsense about his prospects, and how they were improving. Nothing to interest me, or you either. I think you were away."

"I was not away at the time," says Lauraine quietly; "and any news from Keith would have interested me. But I suppose you thought it best to—forget."

Mrs. Douglas looks slightly uncomfortable. "Dear me, Lauraine," she says pettishly, "what are you making such a fuss for? Keith was a very nice boy, and all that; but you are both grown up now, and that brother-and-sister business couldn't go on for ever. What does he say in that letter? Is he still in Chicago?"

"He is in England," answers Lauraine, still very quietly; "and he has been left an immense fortune by some rich, eccentric old Yankee, who took a great fancy to him. Also, he is coming here this morning to call on us. He is anxious to see me after four years' absence."

Mrs. Douglas turns suddenly very white. Her eyes flash their eager scrutiny at her daughter's face.

"What nonsense! Here—and to-day? It is impossible. I must send a message."

"Stay, mother." The girl lays her hand on her mother's arm, and her voice trembles a little. "Don't send any message. Let him come. He will be here just when we come back from the church.

"I should like to see my old playmate, and receive his congratulations on such a day as this. We were always like brother and sister, you know. He will be delighted with my future prospects, I am sure—though I feel rather like the servants who leave an old place 'to better themselves,' and are not quite sure how they will get on in the new. Oh, do let him come! It is just the one thing wanting to make my wedding perfect."

Mrs. Douglas looks at her with puzzled wonder. "I don't quite understand you," she says uncomfortably. "You really wish Keith Athelstone to come here, knowing nothing of the altered circumstances? It will be horribly unpleasant. There will be a scene, and you know I detest scenes. They are such bad form."

"There will be no scene," Lauraine says very quietly. "I think you know me better than that. And it is the last thing I ask of you, before I leave your house to-day. Let him come."

She speaks calmly enough, but a feverish flush glows in her cheek, and her eyes look up at her mother's face more in command than in entreaty.

"Oh! if you put it like that," Mrs. Douglas says, with a pretty pretence of feeling that Lauraine regards with scornful amusement, "I cannot deny you. Let it be so, then. I only hope he will behave himself. He was always so dreadfully impetuous and hot-headed. That Spanish mother of his is to blame for that. Well, my darling, it is a charming day for your wedding, and if you are ready for breakfast come down to my boudoir. You will find me there. By the way, would you mind giving me that letter to read? I should like to see what he says."

Lauraine hands it to her, and an odd little smile comes over her lips.

"If we had not been quite so much like brother and sister," she says, "and if you hadn't been quite so determined to marry me this season, Keith would have been a pretty good match after all."

Mrs. Douglas gives her a sharp glance of scrutiny. "You are not foolish enough to regret this boy," she says. "He could never be such a match as Sir Francis."

"Regret! Why should I regret?" says the girl, turning away with a shrug of her pretty shoulders. "Regret and I parted company long ago."

And Mrs. Douglas leaves the room comforted, even if a little puzzled by her daughter's odd conduct.

"Lauraine was always extraordinary," she says, seating herself in her boudoir to commence the perusal of this unwelcome letter. "How thankful I am that I have secured so excellent a future for her! I really thought, at one time I could do nothing with her. She is so very odd in some things. However, Sir Francis will have to manage her now; she's off my hands, thank goodness! It is a pity he is such a brute; but then he is such a good match, and I am so fearfully in debt. How on earth I am to pay for the trousseau I don't know; and nowadays it's not every man who will take a girl without a penny."

Then she gives a sigh of relief, and takes her chocolate from Henriette, and settles herself comfortably in her chair to the perusal of this inopportune letter. As she reads it her brow clouds. She throws it down at last with an angry exclamation. "How horribly unfortunate it should have come to-day! Still, it's a mercy it did not come sooner. What a worry this boy has always been to me! First left to my husband's guardianship, and by his death to mine; then all that nonsense with Lauraine years ago, and the trouble I had to stop it; and now he turns up rich and independent, and, I suppose, in love still, though he doesn't say that. What on earth will he say about my keeping back that letter three months ago? But it was such nonsense, and it would have spoiled my scheme entirely. I hope to goodness Lauraine has forgotten him; she seemed to take it very quietly. Only when they meet it will really be very awkward. Dear me! I shall need all my self-possession to prevent an esclandre. I must try and see him first and alone. I suppose he has learnt to control himself a little

by this time. Poor boy! after all he was very nice; and what a handsome face—and those eyes! They would coax anything out of one, really. 'Bad blue eyes,' his old nurse used to call them. Poor old thing! she will go out of her mind with delight at the bare thought of seeing him again. I had better send Lauraine to tell her. Ah! here she comes."

Lauraine enters, paler than ever, and her mother glances somewhat anxiously at the pretty, daintily-spread breakfast-table. Certainly the poverty Mrs. Douglas speaks of is not outwardly visible in any of the appointments or surroundings of the house in Grosvenor Street. Poverty, according to the ideas of fashionable ladies, seems an extraordinary compound of selfish desires and inability to be wildly extravagant.

"Here is your letter, dear," she says to Lauraine. "Really quite a stroke of luck for poor Keith; I am more than delighted about it. Perhaps, after all, it is as well he should come here at once, so after breakfast just run upstairs and tell old nurse. She will be overjoyed at the good news. And now you really must eat something. You look very pale, and I want you to be spoken of as the prettiest bride of the season."

Lauraine's lips curl scornfully, but she says nothing, only in her heart she thinks, "I hope few brides feel as I do to-day!"

CHAPTER II

"Heaven bless you, my bonnie bird," says a trembling voice.

It is an hour and a half later, and Lauraine, in her shimmering satin robe, and with her bridal wreath upon her brow, stands before a bent, aged figure, supporting itself on a crutch, looking with dim and most loving eyes at the beautiful vision.

"Ah," goes on the quavering old voice, "may long life and happiness be aye yours, my dearie. It's auld Nannie will pray for it every day she lives, though she never thoct to see you mated wi' sic a bridegroom, nor wearing a face so sad on your ain wedding morn. Ah! if Maister Keith were here the day he'd be carrying a sair heart in his breast, I'm thinking."

"Hush, nurse!" said the girl gently. "I can't stay a minute. I've only come to tell you some news. Master Keith is coming here—coming to-day; and if he calls when we are at—at church, I want you to see him, and—and tell him about this. Will you, nursie? And make it as pleasant as you can. Tell him that I am very happy ... Oh, nurse!—nurse!"

The brave clear voice gives way, a sob bursts from the girl, and, regardless of the beautiful dress, the costly lace, she throws herself at the old woman's feet, and burying her face in her lap, bursts into tears.

"Whist, whist, my lamb!" cries the old woman, terrified at such unexpected emotion. "What for are ye taking on in sic a way? There, dry your eyes, my bonnie bairn. You needn't greet on your wedding-day, surely; and, oh! if your leddy mither comes and sees that braw goon all sae crushed and crookit, what will she be saying? There, there—rest ye quiet now. What is it ye're greeting for? Ye tell't me but yester e'en ye were aye quite content wi' yersel'."

"Ah!" says the girl, rising to her feet, and dashing the tears away with a half-ashamed energy, "perhaps I did; but then, nursie, that was yesterday."

"Ye were always a queer bit bairn," says the old woman, looking proudly and fondly at her beautiful charge. "Heaven make yer life gang straight, my dearie. My heart misgies me sore for you the day, though I oughtn't to speak sae despondingly. Still I will e'en hope for the best, and pray for ye while there's aye a breath left in my auld body to do it."

"Aye, do," answers the girl softly, as she presses her fresh young lips to the withered cheek. "Who knows, nurse, I may need your prayers yet?"

"Dinna ye speak sae sadly, my bairn," says the old woman. "Keep up a brave heart, and aye trust in Providence. You're a braw bride, my dearie, and maybe he'll be a gude mon to ye, for didn't he swear to worship the verra ground ye walk on?"

"Don't let us talk of him," answers the girl pettishly. "I feel quite wicked, nurse, when I think of what I am doing. It seems to come home to me so terribly now. But it's too late to help anything—too late!"

"Dinna say those words; they have a wearyful sound on your bonnie lips," says the aged woman tenderly. "Maybe, it will turn out better than ye think; and the mistress's heart was just set upon it, you know, and she was always a masterful woman in her way. Ay—ay, my bairn, it's ill to greet o'er spilt milk, and all the kye in the byrne. There, now, they'll e'en be calling you. Yes, I'll remember about Maister Keith, and he'll hear it as gently as my auld lips can tell him. Ye may trust Nannie for that. Run ye doon now, my dearie, and God bless your bonnie face, and give you a' the happiness He sees fit."

There is a hurried embrace, and then the girl takes up her long, floating train in her left hand, and so goes out of the room and down the stairs, and enters her own chamber once more.

"What a time you have been!" exclaims her mother impatiently; "and Henriette is waiting to put on your veil. Sit down; the carriage will be here directly."

Without a word the girl seats herself before the glass, and the deft fingers of the French maid fastens the filmy lace on the beautiful head, and like a transparent cloud it seems to float over and envelop the lovely figure in its misty folds.

She looks so exquisitely lovely that both mother and maid hold their breath for one moment, and then murmur rhapsodies of admiration. The girl looks quietly at herself, and says nothing. She knows she is beautiful; she has proved it often enough in her three seasons of London life, but to-day she cares very little about that beauty, for her heart is troubled and her peace has fled. If only that letter had not come!

Alas! it is too late now for regrets or repentance. The moments hurry on—hurry on as if they would drag her to her doom with flying wings, not creep along leaden-footed, as her own reluctance would have had them. How is it she feels like this now—now when it is so useless, so vain? A few days—nay, even a few hours ago, and she was content enough; but there seems no content possible now, and the nearer the hour approaches, the greater grows her dread.

"One moment, mother," she says, as Mrs. Douglas turns to leave the room. "Henriette, you may go."