le husband for you." Gregory imagined that he was speaking
carefully and choosing his words, but he was aware that his anger
coloured his voice. He had also been aware, some little time before, in
a lower layer of consciousness, of the stir and rustle of steps and
dresses in the passage outside--Madame von Marwitz conducting Eleanor
Scrotton to the door. And now--had she actually been listening, or did
his words coincide with the sudden opening of the door?--Madame von
Marwitz herself appeared upon the threshold.

Her face made the catastrophe all too evident. She had heard him. She
had, he felt convinced, crept quietly back and stood to listen before
entering. His memory reconstructed the long pause between the departing
rustle and this apparition.

Madame von Marwitz's face had its curious look of smothered heat. The
whites of her eyes were suffused though her cheeks were pale.

"I must apologise," she said. "I overheard you as I entered, Mr.
Jardine, and what I heard I cannot ignore. What is it that you say to
Karen? What is it that you say of the man I thought of as a possible
husband for her?"

She advanced into the room and laying her arm round Karen's shoulders
she stood confronting him.

"I don't think I can discuss this with you," said Gregory. "I am very
sorry that you overheard me." The slight smile of his pain had gone. He
looked at Madame von Marwitz with a flinty eye.

"Ah, but you must discuss it; you shall," said Madame von Marwitz. "You
say things to my child that I am not to overhear. You seek to poison her
mind against me. You take her from me and then blacken me in her eyes. A
possible husband! Would to God," said Madame von Marwitz, with sombre
fury, "that the possibility had been fulfilled! Would to God that it
were my brave, deep-hearted Franz who were her husband--not you, most
ungrateful, most ungenerous of men."

"Tante," said Karen, who still stood looking down, grasping her
chair-back and encircled by her guardian's arm, "he did not mean you to
hear him. Forgive him."

"I beg your pardon, Karen," said Gregory, "I am very sorry that Madame
von Marwitz overheard me; but I have said nothing for which I wish to
apologize."

"Ah! You hear him!" cried Madame von Marwitz, and the inner
conflagration now glittered in her eyes like flames behind the windows
of a burning house. "You hear him, Karen? Forgive him! How can I forgive
him when he has made you wretched! How can I ever forgive him