"Husbands don't trouble to write long letters," remarks Lauraine, folding up this curt epistle. "Sir Francis is going to bring the Salomans here next month. I wonder what on earth Lady Jean will do with herself." "She will organize all sorts of entertainments, and turn the place upside down," answers Lady Etwynde. "Are you going to have a large party?" "I suppose so. I am sorry for it. I hoped to have a long spell of rest and quiet." "You will ask your mother, I suppose?" "My mother?" Lauraine starts and looks uncomfortable. "I--I don't know. I haven't thought about it." "I wonder what is in the background," thinks Lady Etwynde to herself. "She and her mother don't get on; and there is Keith Athelstone. Did she make Lauraine marry Sir Francis? I should have thought the girl had sufficient strength of mind to hold her own against persuasion. Still one never knows." Alone in her dressing-room before dinner Lauraine reads again that letter of Keith Athelstone's. "I wonder what I ought to do," she thinks. "Is it dangerous to go on with this? The case looks so different to just 'us two' to what it would, to an outsider. And though I might send him away now, we should be sure to meet again at some period or another. The world is never wide enough to part those who _ought_ to be parted. And the poor fellow is so unhappy. No one understands him as I do. I know in books whenever there is anything of this sort, any danger, the two people always go into heroics, and part nobly, and have fearful sufferings to endure; but then in the third volume everything is sure to come right. If I thought, if I knew there would be a third volume in _our_ lives... Ah, dear me, when do things ever come right in real life? Never, never, never." With a weary sigh that ends these thoughts she locks the letter away. Far enough is she from guessing then what will soon put it and the writer out of her thoughts.