"May Heaven give you strength!" murmurs Lady Etwynde, and she kisses her on the brow. CHAPTER XVIII It seems strange and painful to Lauraine to go back to the gaiety and brilliance of Baden after the quiet and rest of pretty, picturesque little Bingen. A large party of her old friends and acquaintances are at the Badischer Hof, and her husband meets her at the station. Lady Etwynde has returned to England. "You are not looking well," says Sir Francis. "And how thin you have become." "I have not been very strong; this hot weather tries me so," she answers; and then they enter their carriage and drive to the hotel in the cool, sweet September twilight. Lauraine forces herself to talk, to try and appear interested in the forthcoming race; but the sense of strangeness produced by long absence and utter want of sympathy with each other's tastes and pursuits makes itself felt again and again. It is a relief when she finds herself alone in her own room. But with Lady Etwynde's words ringing in her ears, with her new resolves firm and close to her heart, she will not listen to whispers of distaste and discontent. She enters more into the business of her toilette than she has done since her child's death. She astonishes her maid by her critical objections. When she descends she looks like the Lauraine of old. Her cheeks are flushed with excitement, her eyes burn with feverish brilliancy. Her soft, snowy robes seem to make her beauty more fair, more young, more pathetic. The first person to greet her is the Lady Jean--Lady Jean, handsomer, if a little louder and stouter than ever, arrayed in a wonderful Louis Quatorze costume, with glittering steel buttons and ornaments. Consistent with her new _rôle_, Lauraine greets her very cordially, and even smiles with less repugnance on "Jo," who is one of her special detestations, and who looks even uglier, and more Jewish than of yore. They are a very brilliant party assembled here, and the theme on every tongue is the coming race, and the wonderful English racer owned by Sir Francis. Lauraine wonders a little to find the women apparently as conversant with racecourse slang as the men--at the fluency with which Lady Jean discourses on "training," and "hedging," and "running form," and "hard condition." It seems so long since she was with women of this sort, women who ape the "lords of creation" in manners, dress, and morals, that she feels bewildered and out of place amidst them all.