fear for you and Karen. I will face all pain
and difficulty for you both. You are to marry Karen, Franz."

The shuttle that held the great gold thread of her plan was thrown. She
saw the pattern stretch firm and fair before her. Silently and sweetly,
with the intentness of a sibyl who pours and holds forth a deep potion,
she smiled at him across the table.

Franz, who all this time had been leaning on his arms, his hands in
hers, his eyes, through their enlarging pince-nez, fixed on her, did not
move for some moments after the astounding statement reached him. His
stillness and his look of arrested stupor suggested, indeed, a large
blue-bottle slung securely in the subtle threads of a spider's web and
reduced to torpid acquiescence by the spider's stealthy ministrations.
He gazed with mildness, almost with blandness, upon the enchantress, as
if some prodigy of nature overtopping all human power of comment had
taken place before him. Then in a small, feeble voice he said: "_Wass
meinen Sie, gnaedige Frau?_"

"Dear, dear Franz," Madame von Marwitz murmured, pressing his hands with
maternal solicitude, and thus giving him more time to adjust himself to
his situation. "It is not as strange as your humility finds it. And it
is now inevitable. You do not I think realize the position in which you
and Karen are placed. I am not the only witness; the landlady, the
doctor, the maid, and who knows who else,--all will testify that you
have been here with Karen as your wife, that you have been with her day
and night. Do not imagine that Mr. Jardine has sought to take Karen back
or would try to. He has made no movement to get her back. He has most
completely acquiesced in their estrangement. And when he hears that she
has fled with you, that she has passed here, for a week almost, as your
wife, he will be delighted--but delighted, with all his anger against
you--to seize the opportunity for divorcing her and setting himself
free."

But while she spoke Franz's large and ruddy face had paled. He had drawn
his hands from hers though she tried to retain them. He rose from his
chair. "But, _gnaedige Frau_," he said, "that is not right. No; that is
wrong. He may not divorce Karen."

"How will you prevent him from divorcing her, Franz?" Madame von Marwitz
returned, holding him with her eye, while, in great agitation, he passed
his hand repeatedly over his forehead and hair. "You have been seen. I
have been told by those who had seen y