had appeared
before her friend.

"No, Gregory; it is not," Mrs. Forrester returned with some terseness,
for she felt his remark to be unbecoming. "I hope to have some sort of
explanation from you."

"I'm quite ready to explain; but it's hardly possible that my
explanation will satisfy you," said Gregory. "You spoke, just now, when
you called me up, of a situation and said I'd made it. My explanation
can only consist in saying that I didn't make it; that Madame von
Marwitz made it; that she came to us in order to make it and then to fix
the odium of it on me."

Already Mrs. Forrester had flushed. She looked hard at the pot of
jonquils near her. "You really believe that?"

"I do. She can't forgive me for not liking her," said Gregory.

"And you don't like her. You own to it."

"I don't like her. I own to it," Gregory replied with a certain frosty
relief. It was like taking off damp, threadbare garments that had
chilled one for a long time and facing the winter wind, naked, but
invigorated. "I dislike her very much."

"May I ask why?" Mrs. Forrester inquired, with careful courtesy.

"I distrust her," said Gregory. "I think she's dangerous, and tyrannous,
and unscrupulous. I think that she's devoured by egotism. I'm sorry. But
if you ask me why, I can only tell you."

Mrs. Forrester sat silent for a moment, and then, the flush on her
delicate old cheek deepening, she murmured: "It is worse, far worse,
than Mercedes told me. Even Mercedes didn't suspect this. Gregory,--I
must ask you another question: Do you really imagine that you and your
cruel thoughts of her would be of the slightest consequence to Mercedes
Okraska, if you had not married the child for whose happiness she holds
herself responsible?"

"Of course not. She wouldn't give me another thought, if I weren't
there, in her path; I am in her path, and she feels that I don't like
her, and she hasn't been able to let me alone."

"She has not let you alone because she hoped to make your marriage
secure in the only way in which security was possible for you and Karen.
What happiness could she see for Karen's future if she were to have cut
herself apart from her life; dropped you, and Karen with you? That,
doubtless, would have been the easy thing to do. There is indeed no
reason why women like Mercedes Okraska, women with the world at their
feet, should trouble to think of the young men they may chance to meet,
whose exacting moral sense they don't satisf