sk you;
isn't that the truth, Mrs. Talcott?"

"Well, I don't know. Perhaps there's something in it," Mrs. Talcott
admitted. "Mercedes likes to know I'm here seeing to things. She
mightn't feel easy in her mind if I was away."

"We'll lay it before her, then," said Karen. "I know she will say that
you must come."

CHAPTER XIV

It was not until some three weeks after that Karen paid her visit to
London. Tante had not written at once and Gregory had to control his
discontent and impatience as best he might. He and Karen wrote to each
other every day and he was aware of a fretful anxiety in his letters
which contrasted strangely with the serenity of hers. Once more she made
him feel that she was the more mature. In his brooding imaginativeness
he was like the most youthful of lovers, seeing his treasure menaced on
every hand by the hazards of life. He warned Karen against cliff-edges;
he warned her, now that motors were every day becoming more common,
against their sudden eruption in "cornery" lanes; he begged her
repeatedly to keep safe and sound until he could himself take care of
her. Karen replied with sober reassurances and promises and showed no
corresponding alarms on his behalf. She had, evidently, more confidence
in the law of probability.

She wired at last to say that she had heard from Tante and would come up
next day if Lady Jardine could have her at such short notice. Gregory
had made his arrangements with Betty, who showed a most charming
sympathy for his situation, and when, at the station, he saw Karen's
face smiling at him from a window, when he seized her arm and drew her
forth, it was with a sense of relief and triumph as great as though she
were restored to him after actual perils.

"Darling, it has seemed such ages," he said.

He was conscious, delightedly, absorbedly, of everything about her. She
wore her little straw hat with the black bow and a long hooded cape of
thin grey cloth. In her hand she held a small basket containing her
knitting--she was knitting him a pair of golf stockings--and a book.

He piloted her to the cab he had in waiting. Her one small shabby box
was put on the top and a very large dressing-case, curiously contrasting
in its battered and discoloured magnificence with the box, placed
inside; it was a discarded one of Madame von Marwitz's, as its tarnished
initials told him. It was only as the cab rolled out of the station,
after he had kissed Karen and was hold