"Fretting could do no good," he said philosophically, and he hated the gloomy quietude of Falcon's Chase, and was only too glad to leave it. Lady Etwynde stayed with Lauraine all through that dreary winter; she could not bear to leave her alone in her grief and despair, for the sorrow seemed but to take deeper root in her nature. Even all Lady Etwynde's gentle sympathy could make no way. She half-feared and only half-comprehended this new phase in her friend's character. For she could not know that Lauraine felt a terror of herself now; that it seemed to her as if the one safeguard she had clung to had been swept from her hold, and she lay anchorless, shelterless on the great dark sea of life, beholding no hope or ray of light, turn where she would. The chill of winter passed into the fair, sweet month of spring; but no change came to her. Nothing seemed to thaw the ice about her heart. A strange chill and silence from the outer world rested upon her life as it was now. Of all her many friends and acquaintances none seemed to remember her or heed her. Keith had written again and yet again; she had never answered him once. She _dared_ not. His sympathy, his presence would have been a comfort too great not to be dangerous, and the more she longed for them the more rigorously she denied them to herself. With the spring her husband wrote to know whether she wanted to come to town for the season. She read the letter with a shuddering horror. The season! To dance, drive, gossip, kill time in a round of empty pleasures; sate herself with luxury and extravagance. The thought seemed loathsome to her now. Her youth and all that was best in her seemed to have died with her little child. Her eyes seemed ever to have that look in them that has so frightened and pained her friend; the look as of tears that could not fall. She was awfully, terribly changed, both in body and mind, and when Lady Etwynde paid her a flying visit, tearing herself from æsthetic joys and the glories of the Grosvenor Gallery Exhibition, and endless _réunions_ among the cultured, she was shocked and alarmed at the alteration. "You must leave here, or you will go melancholy mad!" she said, imperatively; and Lauraine, having arrived at that stage when she was too spiritless and too indifferent to oppose any vigorous scheme, yielded passively, and was borne off to Erlsbach. Sir Francis, of course, could not come. He liked London, and was not going to give up its thousand and one enjoyments for the sake of an invalid's whim. Her mother offered voluntarily to sacrifice herself in the matter; but Lauraine would not hear of it, and in the end she and Lady Etwynde, under charge of an experienced courier, set out for Germany and, travelling by slow and easy stages, arrived one warm June evening at quaint, pretty Erlsbach.