Mrs. Douglas feels decidedly uncomfortable. "I am only speaking for your good," she says. "For your child's sake you ought to be careful. Of course, Society is very lax, and women can do things nowadays that in my youth would have been thought disreputable. Still, you make yourself quite too remarkable about Keith. It is far better to have twenty men dangling after you than one." A hot flush burns on Lauraine's cheeks. "I decline to discuss my affairs with any one," she says, coldly. "I am perfectly well able to take care of myself." "Ah, people always think that," says Mrs. Douglas, fanning herself leisurely. "Of course you are your own mistress now, and can do as you please. I simply give you a hint. People will talk, you know." Lauraine's heart beat quickly, stormily, beneath its shrouding laces. A new trouble seems dawning for her, and yet it but rouses in her heart a fierce desire to brave the world--to laugh to scorn its whispers. Is she not strong? Has she not honour--courage--fidelity? "I will not affect to misunderstand you," she says at last, looking calmly into her mother's face as she speaks. "You think Keith might forget--or I? But you might know us better than that. We are not likely to scandalize Society--be at rest on that point. Is it not possible for a woman and a man to care for each other without love, and without--shame?" "Possible?--that _may_ be," said Mrs. Douglas. "But probable--I think not. I don't believe in Platonics when a man is under sixty and a woman not forty-five. Nor does the world. Take my advice, dear--there is safety in numbers--don't think only of the attractions of one." "I am not the sort of woman to make many friends," Lauraine answers, tranquilly. "And the few I really like are more to me than the whole crowd of others. But your warning was quite unnecessary, mother, and I think you had very little right to utter it." She rises from her seat as she speaks and goes towards the other end of the room, where the Lady Jean sits radiant and entertaining, being one of the few wise women who take as much pains to conciliate their own sex, as to charm the other. Mrs. Douglas looks after her uneasily. "I have done no good," she thinks. "Perhaps only harm. But, after all, she is warned, and really it is quite too ridiculous to think he can hang about her for ever. I thought he would have had more sense. And she has been married two years--he ought to have forgotten by this time. As for Lauraine herself, she was always so romantic, I don't blame her so much; but Keith--and what on earth can she see in him except that he has long eyelashes? I always thought him quite stupid myself, and Lauraine has mind enough of her own to like cleverness in other people. But I do hope she won't get talked about. It would be altogether too dreadful. There is Lady Jean, now----"