On entering the smaller room she has drawn the door after her, but not quite closed it. The velvet curtains sweep down, and no one from the library can see them, but the sound of their voices is audible. It happens that Lauraine enters the outer room for a book, and is just taking it down from the case when the sound of her own name, uttered by Lady Jean's voice, strikes sharply on her ear. "Does Lauraine know?" "No," answers her husband's voice. "As you advised, I said nothing about it. Had Athelstone accepted, I would have told her that I had heard of his dangerous illness, and asked him here to set him up again." "How excessively provoking!" continues Lady Jean. "Depend on it, Frank, this is a blind. Either Keith suspects we know of his love for your wife, or she has been beforehand." "My dear Jean!" exclaims Sir Francis. Lauraine waits to hear no more. Astonishment has kept her spellbound. Now she turns from the room with a sickening, horrible sense of shame in her heart, with the blood dyeing her white face, with all the dignity and pride of womanhood stung and outraged by this unexpected discovery. Her husband and Lady Jean are cognizant of Keith's mad passion for herself, have actually plotted to bring him under her roof, to throw them together once again. For what purpose? Like a lightning flash the whole terrible truth seems to burst upon her. Suspicions, hints, all take new shape by the light of this new discovery--her husband's long friendship for Lady Jean, his indifference to herself. But that he could have stooped so low as to plan his wife's dishonour for the sake of his own freedom---- It seems to her almost incredible. The whole pitfall opened for her feet now confronts her fully and clearly. If Keith had accepted, if he had come here--she unconscious of the invitation, and unable to oppose it once so accepted--what then? "Oh, my darling," she half sobs, "thank God you were brave and true to your better self! They may suspect our love, but, as there is a Heaven above, they shall never shame it to their own baseness!" She kneels by her bed in an agony of weeping. Fear, shame, rage, disgust, sweep over her by turns. She sees the whole plot, and her own long blindness, and yet she knows she is powerless to resent either! If her husband accuses her of loving Keith she cannot deny it, and to explain to a mind so coarse and base the struggle and the sufferings that love has cost her, would only bring down ridicule and win her no belief. She feels quite helpless. Her enemy knows her secret, and her evil mind will colour it and send it flying abroad, and she is powerless to resent, or to deny.