As now she sits there with Lady Etwynde's letter in her hand, she thinks it will be better after all to go up to town and leave this solitude, for which she had once yearned; and when she sees in her mirror how pale and thin she has grown she begins to think the place cannot agree with her, as every one says. Of course it is only--the place. She will not, dare not, allow that there is anything else--that the mind is preying on itself, and trying to outlive thought and banish memory, and that the struggle is too hard a one. No; that old folly is over, done with, buried, so she tells herself. Of Keith she has heard no word since they met in Baden. He may be married now, for aught she knows, and yet somehow she feels he is not--that. "Yes, I will go," she says, at last. "The solitude and dreariness are oppressing me, and Etwynde's happiness will rouse me." And she dashes off an immediate acceptance of the invitation, and the next day bids her maid pack her trunks, and starts for London. Lady Etwynde is overjoyed to see her, but shocked at the change in her looks. Yet she dares not breathe too much sympathy, or touch on the old sorrow. "Of what use?" she asks herself, "of what use now?" Colonel Carlisle and Lauraine are mutually delighted with each other. She cannot but admire the handsome physique, the courtly, genial manners, the cultivated intelligence of this hero of her friend's; and they are so perfectly content and happy with each other, that even the most cynical disbelievers in love might acknowledge themselves converts regarding these two. Lauraine makes a charming "propriety." She is engrossed in a book, or inventive of an errand, or just going into the other room to write a letter or try over a song, or, in fact, furnished with any amount of excuses that seem perfectly natural and innocent enough to leave the lovers to themselves. "There will be one happy marriage among my acquaintances," she thinks to herself, as she sees them so radiant, so engrossed. "And, indeed, they deserve it. Fancy, thirteen years' constancy, and in our age, too! It seems like a veritable romance!" One evening they go to the theatre; the piece is Robertson's comedy, "Caste," and as Lauraine takes her seat and glances round the well-filled house she sees in the box opposite the well-known figures of Mrs. Bradshaw Woollffe, and her niece, and Keith Athelstone. Of course, they see her directly, and exchange bows, Keith keeps at the back of the box, and behind the radiant little figure of his _fiancée_. Lady Etwynde is deeply annoyed at the _contretemps_. As for Lauraine, all the pleasure of the evening is spoilt for her. After the second act she sees Keith leave the box. A few moments afterwards he appears in their own.