She yawned, putting a folded arm under her head so that, slightly
raising it, she could look at Mrs. Talcott more comfortably. "What do
you want to talk about?" she inquired.

Mrs. Talcott's eyes, with their melancholy, immovable gaze, rested upon
her. "About Karen and her husband," she said. "I gathered from some talk
I had with Karen to-day that you let her think you came away from London
simply and solely because you'd had a quarrel with Mr. Jardine."

Madame von Marwitz lay as if arrested by these words for some moments of
an almost lethargic interchange, and then in an impatient voice she
returned: "What business is it of Karen's, pray, if I didn't leave
London simply and solely on account of my quarrel with her husband? I
had found it intolerable to be under his roof and I took the first
opportunity for leaving it. The opportunity happened to coincide with my
arrangements for coming here. What has that to do with Karen?"

"It has to do with her, Mercedes, because the child believes you were
thinking about her when, as a matter of fact, you weren't thinking about
her or about anyone but this young man you've gotten so taken up with.
Karen believes you care for her something in the same way she does for
you, and it's a sin and a shame, Mercedes," Mrs. Talcott spoke with no
vehemence at all of tone or look, but with decision, "a sin and a shame
to let that child ruin her life because of you."

Again Madame von Marwitz, now turning her eyes on the ceiling, seemed to
reflect dispassionately. "I never conceived it possible that she would
leave him," she then said. "I found him insufferable and I saw that
unless I went Karen also would come to see him as insufferable. To spare
the poor child this I came away. And I was amazed when she appeared
here. Amazed and distressed," said Madame von Marwitz. And after another
moment she took up: "As for him, he has what he deserves."

Mrs. Talcott eyed her. "And what do you deserve, I'd like to know, for
going meddling with those poor happy young things? Why couldn't you let
them alone? Karen's been a bother to you for years. Why couldn't you be
satisfied at having her nicely fixed up and let her tend to her own
potato-patch while you tended to yours? You can't make me believe that
it wasn't your fault--the whole thing--right from the beginning. I know
you too well, Mercedes."

Again Madame von Marwitz lay, surprisingly still and surprisingly
unresentful. It was as if, plac