Keith watches them quietly, not even anxious or disturbed. All his life seems to have become one great calm now. "Kill me----" he says, as the nurse's words reach him. "She has given me life!" And indeed it seems as if she had, for from that hour slowly but surely he begins to mend. The weakness and exhaustion against which his physicians had battled, no longer hold his strength in their control. Hope, peace, joy have come to him with Lauraine's presence, and with them comes also the desire to live. "It is wonderful!" say the doctors. "It is wonderful!" echoes Lady Etwynde, standing by Lauraine's side some two days later, and noting the change that at last leaves room for hope. The blue eyes look up to one face--the face that has haunted his life, and seems to have called him back across the border-land on which his feet have rested. "It is not wonderful," they seem to say, "it is only--love." CHAPTER XXXVII "Dear, dear! Now, only _do_ tell!" exclaims Mrs. Bradshaw Woollffe, in the solemn conclave of a feminine gathering at the commencement of the London season. "You ought to know, Mrs. Douglas. Is your daughter really going to marry Keith Athelstone after all?" "After all!" echoes Mrs. Douglas. "All what!" "Well, I guess you know pretty well what people said two seasons ago. But to think things should turn out like this--quite a romance! Only to think of it!" "It is not so unnatural," says Mrs. Douglas loftily. "Mr. Athelstone was always deeply attached to my daughter, and, in fact, came home from America with the intention of proposing. But he was just too late. My dear girl had accepted Sir Francis Vavasour." "Is that so? Well, I've heard another shaped tale about that. Anyhow, it seems Sir Francis was a brute to her, and she--well, any one who knows Lauraine, knows she's got real downright good stuff in her; and as for Vavasour--isn't there one of your national poets says: 'Nothing in his life became him like his leaving it'? That's just about his sort for an epitaph, I should say. No offence, I hope, Mrs. Douglas, though he was your son-in-law. You know I always speak my mind right plump out. There's no nonsense about me." "I am not in the least offended," says Mrs. Douglas sweetly. "All men have faults, and Sir Francis Vavasour was certainly not as devoted a husband as my dear child had reason to expect. But you see she is rather cold and prudish, and all that, and he--well, he had been spoilt by society. We must excuse him for being a little wild, and really they got on very well together, and nothing could exceed his kindness and generosity to Lauraine. And he has left her everything." "And she's going to marry Keith Athelstone?" "Well, her husband has been dead for nearly a year, and dear Keith is so very delicate since that accident, and he has been ordered to winter at Algiers, and nothing will induce him to go unless Lauraine goes also."