something right here, so as there shan't be any mistake about it.
You were right about Mercedes, all along; do you take that in? I don't
want to say any more about Mercedes than I've got to; I've cut loose
from my moorings, but I guess I do care more about Mercedes than
anyone's ever done who's known her as well as I do. But you were right
about her. And I'm your friend and I'm Karen's friend, and it pretty
near killed me when all this happened."

Gregory now had taken a chair before her and his eyes, with a new look,
gazed deeply into hers as she went on: "I wouldn't have accepted what
your letter said, not for a minute, if I hadn't got Mercedes's next
thing and if I hadn't seen that Mercedes, for a wonder, wasn't telling
lies. I was a mighty sick woman, Mr. Jardine, for a few days; I just
seemed to give up. But then I got to thinking. I got to thinking, and
the more I thought the more I couldn't lie there and take it. I thought
about Mercedes, and what she's capable of; and I thought about you and
how I felt dead sure you loved Karen; and I thought about that poor
child and all she'd gone through; and the long and short of it was that
I felt it in my bones that Mercedes was up to mischief. Karen sent for
her, she said; but I don't believe Karen sent for her;--I believe she
got wind somehow of where Karen was and lit out before I could stop her;
yes, I was away that day, Mr. Jardine, and when I came back I found that
three ladies had come for Mercedes and she'd made off with them. It may
be true about Karen; she may have done this wicked thing; but if she's
done it I don't believe it's the way Mercedes says she has. And I've
worked it out to this: you must see Karen, Mr. Jardine; you must have it
from her own mouth that she loves Franz and wants to go off with him and
marry him before you give her up."

Gregory's face, as these last words were spoken, showed a delicate
stiffening. "She won't see me," he said.

"Who says so?" asked Mrs. Talcott.

"Don't imagine that I'd have accepted her guardian's word for it," said
Gregory, "but everything Madame von Marwitz has written has been merely
corroborative. She told us that Karen was there with this man and I knew
it already. She said that Karen had begun to look to him as a rescuer
from me on the day she saw him here in London, and what I remembered of
that day bore it out. She said that I should remember that on the night
we parted Karen told me that she would try to se