spleasure with some difficulty,
interposed. "I don't think Lady Jardine really quite understands the
position, Karen," she said. "It isn't the normal one, Lady Jardine.
Madame von Marwitz stands, really, to Karen in a mother's place."

"Oh, but I can't agree with you, Mrs. Forrester," Betty replied. "Madame
von Marwitz doesn't strike me as being in the least like Karen's mother.
And she isn't Karen's mother. And Karen's husband, now, should certainly
stand first in her life."

A silence followed the sharp report. Mrs. Forrester's and Karen's eyes
had turned on the Baroness who sat still, as though her breast had
received the shot. With tragic eyes she gazed out above Karen's head;
then: "It is true," she said in a low voice, as though communing with
herself; "I am indeed alone." She rose. With the slow step of a Niobe
she moved down the room and disappeared.

"I do not forgive you for this, Betty," said Karen, following her
guardian. Betty, like a naughty school-girl, was left confronting Mrs.
Forrester across the tea-table.

"Lady Jardine," said the old lady, fixing her bright eyes on her guest,
"I don't think you can have realised what you were saying. Madame von
Marwitz's isolation is one of the many tragedies of her life, and you
have made it clear to her."

"I'm very sorry," said Betty. "But I feel what Madame von Marwitz is
doing to be so mistaken, so wrong."

"These formalities don't obtain nowadays, especially if a wife is so
singularly related to a woman like Madame von Marwitz. And Mercedes is
quite above all such little consciousnesses, I assure you. She is not
aware of sets, in that petty way. It is merely a treat she is giving the
child, for she knows how much Karen loves to be with her. And it is only
in her train that Karen goes."

"Precisely." Betty had risen and stood smoothing her muff and not
feigning to smile. "In her train. I don't think that Gregory's wife
should go in anybody's train."

"It was markedly in Mercedes's train that he found her."

"All the more reason for wishing now to withdraw her from it. Karen has
become something more than Madame von Marwitz's _panache_."

Mrs. Forrester at this fixed Betty very hard and echoes of Miss Scrotton
rang loudly. "You must let me warn you, Lady Jardine," she said, "that
you are making a position, difficult already for Mercedes, more
difficult still. It would be a grievous thing if Karen were to recognize
her husband's jealousy. I'm afraid I