him. And I think she needed distraction just now, I think this
marriage of little Karen's has affected her a good deal. The child is of
course connected in her mind with so much that is dear and tragic in the
past."

"Oh, Karen!" said Miss Scrotton, who, drying her eyes, had accepted Mrs.
Forrester's consolations with a slight sulkiness, "she hasn't given a
thought to Karen, I can assure you."

"No; you can't assure me, Eleanor," Mrs. Forrester returned, now with a
touch of severity. "I don't think you quite understand how deep a bond
of that sort can be for Mercedes--even if she seldom speaks of it. She
has written to me very affectingly about it. I only hope she will not
take it to heart that they could not wait for her. I could not blame
them. Everything was arranged; a house in the Highlands lent to them for
the honeymoon."

"Take it to heart? Dear me no; she won't like it, probably; but that is
a different matter."

"Gregory is radiant, you know."

"Is he?" said Miss Scrotton gloomily. "I wish I could feel radiant about
that match; but I can't. I did hope that Gregory would marry well."

"It isn't perhaps quite what one would have expected for him," Mrs.
Forrester conceded; "but she is a dear girl. She behaved very prettily
while she was here with Lady Jardine."

"Did she? It is a very different marriage, isn't it, from the one that
Mercedes had thought suitable. She told you, I suppose, about Franz
Lippheim."

"Yes; I heard about that. Mercedes was a good deal disappointed. She is
very much attached to the young man and thought that Karen was, too. I
have never seen him."

"From what I've heard he seemed to me as eminently suitable a husband
for Karen as my poor Gregory is unsuitable. What he can have discovered
in the girl, I can't imagine. But I remember now how much interested in
her he was on that day that he met her here at tea. She is such a dull
girl," said Miss Scrotton sadly. "Such a heavy, clumsy person. And
Gregory has so much wit and irony. It is very curious."

"These things always are. Well, they are married now, and I wish them
joy."

"No one is at the wedding, I suppose, but old Mrs. Talcott. The next
thing we shall hear will be that Sir Alliston has fallen in love with
Mrs. Talcott," said Miss Scrotton, indulging her gloomy humour.

"Oh, yes; the Jardines went down, and Mrs. Morton;"--Mrs. Morton was a
married sister of Gregory's. "Lady Jardine has very much taken to the
child you