to her former
place. She examined him and he examined her and he felt that she probed
through his composure to his unrest. "I wanted a little talk," she
observed presently. "You've gotten pretty fond of Karen, haven't you,
Mr. Jardine?"

This was to come at once to the point. "Very fond," said Gregory,
wondering if she had been diagnosing his fondness in a letter to Madame
von Marwitz.

"She hasn't got many friends," Mrs. Talcott, after another moment of
contemplation, went on. "She's always been a lonesome sort of child."

"That's what has struck me, too," said Gregory.

"Sometimes Mercedes takes her along; but sometimes she don't," Mrs.
Talcott pursued. "It ain't a particularly lively sort of life for a
young girl, going on in an out-of-the-way place like this with an old
woman like me. She's spent most of her time with me, when you come to
reckon it up." There was no air of criticism or confidence in Mrs.
Talcott. She put forward these remarks with unbiassed placidity.

"I suppose Madame von Marwitz couldn't arrange always to take her?"
Gregory asked after a pause.

"It ain't always convenient toting a young girl round with you," said
Mrs. Talcott. "Sometimes Mercedes feels like it and sometimes she don't.
Karen and I stay at home, now that I'm too old to go about with her, and
we see her when she's home. That's the idea. But she ain't much at home.
She's mostly travelling and staying around with folks."

"It isn't a particularly lively time, it seems to me, for either of
you," said Gregory. It was his instinct to blame Madame von Marwitz for
the featureless lives led by her dependents, though he could but own
that it might, perhaps, be difficult to fit them into the vagabondage of
a great pianist's existence.

"Well, it's good enough for me," said Mrs. Talcott. "I'm very contented
if it comes to that; and so is Karen. She's known so much that's worse,
the same as I have. But she's known what's better, too; she was a pretty
big girl when her Poppa died and she was a companion to him and I reckon
that without figuring it up much to herself she's lonesome a good deal."

Gregory for a moment was silent. Then he found it quite natural to say
to Mrs. Talcott: "What I hope is that she will marry me."

"I hope so, too," said Mrs. Talcott with no alteration of tone. "I hoped
so the moment I set eyes on you. I saw that you were a good young man
and that you'd make her a good kind husband."

"Thanks, very much," s