She is counting the days now before it will all be over--before she can fly to quiet Falcon's Chase, and in her child and her books find companionship more to her taste. She longs for those dark old forest lands, where the noise of the sea echoes always, and everything is grand and noble, and rich with the traditions of past ages. She does not dread solitude, but rather longs for it. All this feverish unrest will be over then. She need have no house party till the autumn, but she is going to take Lady Etwynde with her. There is something harmonious and tranquil about her that will suit the dim old Chase, with its great dusky chambers, and magnificent hall, and oak-panelled galleries. Moving to and fro among her guests, and talking the pretty frothy nothings that Society demands, Lauraine thinks only of this. The longing is taking absolute possession of her, and Keith will not be able to follow her--there. She feels a dread--almost a dislike to him to-night. The memory of that scene a few days ago fills her with a sense of intolerable shame, and her mother's warning sounds like an added insult. A sense of irritation--of impatience--of disappointment is heavy at her heart. "He is not good, or honourable, or he would not stay," she says to herself, as move where she may, the sadness of those eyes, with their watchful entreaty, haunts her. "Why did I let him persuade me to utter that word?" The guests leave--the great rooms are solitary. Sir Francis goes off to finish the evening somewhere else. Lauraine seats herself wearily by one of the open windows, and looks out at the foliage of the Park--all dry, and sere, and dusty now, with the long drought and heat of summer. She looks and looks, and great tears gather in her eyes and roll slowly down her cheeks. She has everything that the world counts worth having--she is young and beautiful and courted and flattered; but for all that her heart aches--aches--aches. "It was impossible then--it is doubly impossible now," she says, wearily. "Sin--shame--misery--whichever way I look at it. Oh, God help me--what am I to do?" CHAPTER XII Falcon's Chase is apt to be considered somewhat dreary and dull by those members of the fashionable world who only exist to kill time, and see no beauty in Nature's handiwork. But to Lauraine the whole place is beautiful beyond words. The great dark forest lands that shelter the deer in their coverts, the old bridle-paths, where the boughs meet overhead, the solemn, stately old mansion itself, shut in by elm-woods and mighty oaks of centenarian growth, the stillness and solitude and repose that breathe everywhere, these have for her an exceeding charm, an ever-varying delight. For days and days she does nothing but wander about, sometimes alone, sometimes with Lady Etwynde.