"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."