Then she gives a sigh of relief, and takes her chocolate from Henriette, and settles herself comfortably in her chair to the perusal of this inopportune letter. As she reads it her brow clouds. She throws it down at last with an angry exclamation. "How horribly unfortunate it should have come to-day! Still, it's a mercy it did not come sooner. What a worry this boy has always been to me! First left to my husband's guardianship, and by his death to mine; then all that nonsense with Lauraine years ago, and the trouble I had to stop it; and now he turns up rich and independent, and, I suppose, in love still, though he doesn't say that. What on earth will he say about my keeping back that letter three months ago? But it was such nonsense, and it would have spoiled my scheme entirely. I hope to goodness Lauraine has forgotten him; she seemed to take it very quietly. Only when they meet it will really be very awkward. Dear me! I shall need all my self-possession to prevent an _esclandre_. I must try and see him first and alone. I suppose he has learnt to control himself a little by this time. Poor boy! after all he was very nice; and what a handsome face--and those eyes! They would coax anything out of one, really. 'Bad blue eyes,' his old nurse used to call them. Poor old thing! she will go out of her mind with delight at the bare thought of seeing him again. I had better send Lauraine to tell her. Ah! here she comes." Lauraine enters, paler than ever, and her mother glances somewhat anxiously at the pretty, daintily-spread breakfast-table. Certainly the poverty Mrs. Douglas speaks of is not outwardly visible in any of the appointments or surroundings of the house in Grosvenor Street. Poverty, according to the ideas of fashionable ladies, seems an extraordinary compound of selfish desires and inability to be wildly extravagant. "Here is your letter, dear," she says to Lauraine. "Really quite a stroke of luck for poor Keith; I am more than delighted about it. Perhaps, after all, it is as well he should come here at once, so after breakfast just run upstairs and tell old nurse. She will be overjoyed at the good news. And now you really must eat something. You look very pale, and I want you to be spoken of as the prettiest bride of the season." Lauraine's lips curl scornfully, but she says nothing, only in her heart she thinks, "I hope few brides feel as I do to-day!" CHAPTER II "Heaven bless you, my bonnie bird," says a trembling voice. It is an hour and a half later, and Lauraine, in her shimmering satin robe, and with her bridal wreath upon her brow, stands before a bent, aged figure, supporting itself on a crutch, looking with dim and most loving eyes at the beautiful vision.