"Do not speak of her to me," she said.

"But we will not speak of her. I do not wish to speak of her," said Mr. Drew, also rising, a stress of excitement and anxiety making itself felt in his soft, sibilant, hurried tones; "I understand every exquisite loyalty that hedges your path. And I'm hedged, too; you see that. Wait, wait—please listen. We won't speak of her. What I want to speak of is you. I want to ask you to make use of me. I want to ask you to trust me. You love her, but how can you depend on her? She is a child, an undisciplined, capricious child, and she is displeased with you, seriously displeased. Who is there in the world you can depend on? You are unutterably alone. And I ask you to turn to me."

Her frosty scrutiny disconcerted him. He had not touched her in the least.

"These are things you cannot say to me," she said. "There is nothing that you can do for me. I only know you as my guardian's friend; you forgot that, I think, when you brought me here." She turned from him.

"Oh, but you do not understand! I have made you angry! Oh, please, Mrs. Jardine;" his voice rose to sharp distress. He caught her hand with a supplicating yet determined grasp. "You can't understand. You are so inconceivably unaware. It is because of you; all because of you. Haven't you really seen or understood? She can't forgive you because I love you. I love you, you adorable child. I have only stayed on and borne with her because of you!"

His passion flamed before her frozen face. And as, for a transfixed moment of stupor, she stood still, held by him, he read into her stillness the pause of the woman to whom the apple of the tree of life is proffered, amazed, afraid, yet thrilled through all her being, tempted by the very suddenness, incapable of swift repudiation. He threw his arms around her, taking, in a draught of delight, the impression of silvery, glacial loveliness that sent dancing stars of metaphor streaming in his head, and pressed his lips to her cheek.

It was but one moment of attainment. The thrust that drove him from her was that, indeed, of the strong young goddess, implacable and outraged. Yet even as he read his deep miscalculation in her aspect he felt that the moment had been worth it. Not many men, not even many poets, could say that they had held, in such a scene, on such a night, an unwilling goddess to their breast.

She did not speak. Her eyes did not pause to wither. They passed over him. He had an image of the goddess wheeling to mount some chariot of the sky as, with no indignity of haste, she turned from him. She turned. And in the path, in the entrance to the flagged garden, Tante stood confronting them.

She stood before them in the moonlight with a majesty at once magnificent and ludicrous. She had come swiftly, borne on the wings of a devouring suspicion, and she maintained for a long moment her Medusa stare of horror. Then, it was the ugliest thing that Karen had ever seen, the mask broke. Hatred, fury, malice, blind, atavistic passions distorted her face. It was to fall from one nightmare to another and a worse; for Tante seized her by the shoulders and shook and shook and shook her, till the blood sprang and rang in her ears and eyeballs, and her teeth chattered together, and her hair, loosened by the great jerks, fell down upon her shoulders and about her face. And while she shook her, Tante snarled—seeming to crush the words between her grinding teeth, "Ah! perfide! perfide! perfide!"

From behind, other hands grasped Karen's shoulders. Mr. Drew grappled with Tante for possession of her.

"Leave me—with my guardian," she gathered her broken breath to say. She repeated it and Mr. Drew, invisible to her, replied, "I can't. She'll tear you to pieces."

"Ah! You have still to hear from me—vile seducer!" Madame von Marwitz cried, addressing the young man over Karen's shoulder. "Do you dare dispute my right to save her from you—foul serpent! Leave us! Does she not tell you to leave us?"

"I'll see her safely out of your hands before I leave her," said Mr. Drew. "How dare you speak of perfidy when you saw her repulse me? You'd have found it easier to forgive, no doubt, if she hadn't."

These insolent words, hurled at it, convulsed the livid face that fronted Karen. And suddenly, holding Karen's shoulders and leaning forward, Madame von Marwitz broke into tears, horrible tears—in all her life Karen had never pitied her as she pitied her then—sobbing with raking breaths: "No, no; it is too much. Have I not loved him with a saintly love, seeking to uplift what would draw me down? Has he not loved me? Has he not sought to be my lover? And he can spit upon me in the dust!" She raised her head. "Did you believe me blind, infatuated? Did you think by your tricks and pretences to evade me? Did I not see, from the moment that she came, that your false heart had turned from me?" Her eyes came back to Karen's face and fury again seized her. "And as for you, ungrateful girl—perfidious, yes, and insolent one—you deserve to be denounced to the world. Oh, we understand those retreats. What more alluring to the man who pursues than the woman who flees? What more inflaming than the pose of white, idiotic innocence? You did not know. You did not understand—" fiercely, in a mincing voice, she mimicked a supposed exculpation. "You are so young, so ignorant of life—so immer kindlich! Ah!" she laughed, half strangled, "until the man seizes you in his arms you are quite unaware—but quite, quite unaware—of what he seeks from you. Little fool! And more than fool. Have I not seen your wiles? From day to day have I not watched you? Now it is the piano. You must play him your favourite little piece; so small; you have so little talent; but you will do your best. Now the chance meeting in the garden; you are so fond of flowers; you so love the open air, the sea, the wandering on the cliffs; such a free, wild creature you are. And now we have the frustrated rendezvous of this evening; he should find you dreaming, among your flowers, in the dusk. The pretty picture. And no, you want no dinner; you will go to your own room. But you are not to be found in your own room. Oh, no; it is again the garden; the moon; the sea and solitude that you seek! Be silent!" this was almost shouted at Claude Drew, who broke in with savage denials. "Do you think still to impose on me—you traitor?—No," her eyes burned on Karen's face. "No; you are wiser. You do not speak. You know that the time for insolence has passed. What! You take refuge with me here. You fly from your husband and throw yourself on my hands and say to me,"—again she assumed the mincing tones—"Yes, here I am again. Continue, pray, to work for me; continue, pray, to clothe and feed and lodge me; continue to share your life with me and all of rich and wide and brilliant it can offer; continue, in a word, to hold me high—but very high—above the gutter from which I came—and I take you, I receive you in my arms, I shelter you from malicious tongues, I humble myself in seeking to mend your shattered life; and for my reward you steal from me the heart of the one creature in the world I loved—the one—the only one! Until you came he was mine. Until you came he yearned for me—only for me. Oh, my heart is broken! broken! broken!" She leaned forward, wildly sobbing, and raising herself she shook the girl with all her force, crying: "Out of my sight! Be off! Let me see no more of you!" Covering her face with her hands, she reeled back, and Karen fled down the path, hearing a clamour of sobs and outcries behind her.

She fled along the cliff-path and an incomparable horror was in her soul. Her life had been struck from her. It seemed a ghost that ran, watched by the moon, among the trees.

On the open cliff-path it was very light. The sky was without a cloud. The sea lay like a vast cloth of silk, diapered in silver.

Karen ran to where the path led to a rocky verge.

From here, in daylight, one looked down into a vast hollow in the coast and saw at the bottom, far beneath, a stony beach, always sad, and set with rocks. To-night the enormous cup was brimmed with blackness.

Karen, pausing and leaning forward, resting on her hands, stared across the appalling gulf of inky dark, and down into the nothingness.

Horror had driven her to the spot, and horror, like a presence, rose from the void, and beckoned her down to oblivion. Why not? Why not? The question of despair seemed, like a vast pendulum, to swing her to and fro between the sky and the blackness, so that, blind and deaf and dumb, she felt only the horror, and her own pulse of life suspended over annihilation. And while her fingers clutched tightly at the rock, the thought of Gregory's face, as it had loved her, dimly, like a far beacon, flashed before her. Their love was dead. He did not love her. But they had loved. She moved back, trembling. She did not want to die. She lay down with her face to the ground on the grassy cliff.

When she raised herself it was as if after a long slumber. She was immensely weary, with leaden limbs. Horror was spent; but a dull oppression urged her up and on. There was something that she must never see again; something that would open before her again the black abyss of nothingness; something like the moon, that once had lived, but was now a ghost, white, ghastly, glittering. She must go. At once. And, as if far away, a tiny picture rose before her of some little German town, where she might earn a living and be hidden and forgotten.

But first she must see Mrs. Talcott. She must say good-bye to Mrs. Talcott. There was nothing now that Mrs. Talcott could show her.

She went back softly and carefully, pausing to listen, pushing through unused, overgrown paths and among thickets of gorse and stunted Cornish elms. In the garden all was still; the dreadful clamour had ceased. By the back way she stole up to her room.

A form rose to meet her as she opened the door. Mrs. Talcott had been waiting for her. Taking her hand, Mrs. Talcott drew her in and closed the door.



CHAPTER XXXVI

Mrs. Talcott sat down on the bed and Karen knelt before her with her head in her lap. The old woman's passed quietly over her hair while she wept, and the homely gentleness, like the simplicity of milk to famished lips, flowed into her horror-haunted mind.

She tried to tell Mrs. Talcott what had happened. "She does not love me, Mrs. Talcott. She has turned me out. Tante has told me to go."

"I've seen her," said Mrs. Talcott, stroking on. "I was just going out to look for you if you didn't come in. Did she tear your hair down like this? It's all undone."

"It was when she shook me, Mrs. Talcott. She found me with Mr. Drew. He had kissed me. I could not help it. She knew that I could not help it. She knows that I am not a bad woman."

"You mustn't take Mercedes at her word when she's in a state like that, Karen. She's in an awful state. She's parted from that young man."

"And I am going, Mrs. Talcott."

"Well, I've wanted you to go, from the first. Now you've found her out, this ain't any place for you. You can't go hanging on for all your life, like I've done."

"But Mrs. Talcott—what does it mean? What have I found out? What is Tante?" Karen sobbed. "For all these years so beautiful—so beautiful—to me, and suddenly to become my enemy—someone I do not know."

"You never got in her way before. She's got no mercy, Mercedes hasn't, if you get in her way. Where'd you thought of going, Karen?"

"To Frau Lippheim. She is still in London, I think. I could join her there. You could lend me a little money, Mrs. Talcott. Enough to take me to London."

Mrs. Talcott was silent for a moment. "Come up here, on the bed, Karen," she then said. "Here, wrap this cloak around you; you're awful cold. That's right. Now I want you to sit quiet while I explain things to you the best I can. I've made up my mind to do it. Mercedes will be in her right mind to-morrow and frantic to get hold of you again and get you to forgive her. Oh, I know her. And I don't want her to get hold of you again. I want you to be quit of her. I want you to see, as clear as day, how your husband was right about Mercedes, all along."

"Oh, do not speak of him—" Karen moaned, covering her face as she sat on the bed beside Mrs. Talcott.

"I ain't going to speak about him. I'm going to tell you about me and Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott. "I'm going to explain Mercedes. And I'm going way back to the very beginning to do it."

"Explain it to me. What is she? Has it all been false—all her loveliness?"

"I don't know about false," said Mrs. Talcott. "Mercedes ain't all bad; not by a long shot. She feels good sometimes, like most folks, when it ain't too much trouble. You know how it began, Karen. You know how I'm a sort of connection of Mercedes's mother and I've told you about Dolores. The prettiest creature you ever set eyes on. Mercedes looks like her; only it was a softer face than Mercedes's with great, big black eyes. I can see her now, walking round the galleries of that lovely house in New Orleans with a big white camellia in her black hair and a white muslin dress, standing out round her—like they wore then; singing—singing—so young and happy—it almost breaks my heart to think about her. I've told you about Mercedes's father, too, Pavelek Okraski, and how he came out to New Orleans and gave lessons to Dolores Bastida and made love to her on the sly and got her to run away with him—poor silly thing. When I think it all over I seem to piece things out and see how Mercedes came to be what she is. Her mother was just as sweet and loving as she could be, but scatter-brained and hot-tempered. And Pavelek was a mighty mean man and a mighty bad man, too, a queer, tricky, sly sort of man; but geniusy, with very attractive manners. Mercedes has got his eyes and his way of laughing; she shows her teeth just like he used to do when he laughed. Well, he took Dolores off to Poland and spent all her money as fast as he could get it, and then Senor Bastida and the two boys—nice, hot-tempered boys they were and perfect pictures—all got killed in a vendetta they had with another family in Louisiana, and poor Senora Bastida got sick and died and all the family fortunes went to pieces and there was no more home and no more money either, for Dolores. She just lost everything straight off.

"She sent for me then. Her baby was coming and Pavelek had gone off and she didn't know where he was and she was about distracted. I'd been married before she ran away with Pavelek, but Homer only lived four years and I was a widow then. I had folks left still in Maine; but no one very near and there wasn't anybody I seemed to take to so much as I always had to Dolores. You may say she had a sort of fascination for me. So I sold out what I had and came. My, what a queer journey that was. I don't know how I got to Cracow. I only spoke English and travelling wasn't what it is nowadays. But I got there somehow and found that poor child. She was the wretchedest creature you ever set eyes on; thin as thin; and all haggard and wild. Pavelek neglected her and ran after other women and drank, and when he got drunk and she used to fly out at him—for she was as hot-tempered as she could be—he used to beat her. Yes; that man used to beat Dolores." A note of profound and enduring anger was in Mrs. Talcott's voice.

"He came back after I got there. I guess he thought I'd brought some money, and he came in drunk one day and tried to hit her before me. He didn't ever try it again after that. I just got up and struck him with all my might and main right in the face and he fell down and hurt his head pretty bad and Dolores began to shriek and said I'd killed her husband; but he didn't try it again. He was sort of scared of me, I guess. No: I ain't forgiven Pavelek Okraski yet and I reckon I never shall. I don't seem to want to forgive him, neither in this world nor the next—if there is a next," Mrs. Talcott commented.

"Well, the time for the baby came and on the day Mercedes was born the Austrians bombarded Cracow; it was in '48. I took Dolores down to the cellar and all day long we heard the shells bursting, and the people screeching. And that was the time Mercedes came into the world. Dolores most died, but she got through. But afterwards I couldn't get proper care for her, or food either. She just pined off and died five months after the baby came. Pavelek most went off his head. He was always fond of her in his own mean way, and I guess he suffered considerable when she died. He went off, saying he'd send some money for me and the baby, but precious little of it did I ever see. I made some by sewing and giving lessons in English—I reckon some of those young Poles got queer ways of speaking from me, I was never what you'd call a polished speaker—and I scraped on. Time and time again we were near starving. My! that little garret room, and that big church—Panna Marya they called it—where I'd go and sit with the baby when the services were on to see if I could keep warm in the crowd! And the big fire in '50, when I carried the baby out in a field with lots of other people and slept out. It lasted for ten days that fire.

"It seems like a dream sometimes, all that time," Mrs. Talcott mused, and the distant sorrow of her voice was like the blowing of a winter wind. "It seems like a dream to think I got through with the child alive, and that my sweet, pretty little Dolores went under. There's some things that don't bear thinking about. Well, I kept that baby warm and I kept it fat, and it got to be the prettiest, proudest thing you ever set eyes on. She might have been a queen from the very beginning. And as for Pavelek, she just ruled him from the time she began to have any sense. It was mighty queer to see that man, who had behaved so bad to her mother, cringing before that child. He doted on her, and she didn't care a button for him. It used to make me feel almost sorry for Pavelek, sometimes. She'd look at him, when he tried to please her and amuse her, like he was a performing dog. It kept Pavelek in order, I can tell you, and made things easier for me. She'd just say she wanted things and if she didn't get them straight off she'd go into a black rage, and he'd be scared out of his life and go and work and get 'em for her. And then she began to show she was a prodigy. Pavelek taught her the violin first and then the piano and when he realized she was a genius he most went off his head with pride. Why that man—the selfishest, laziest creature by nature—worked himself to skin and bone so that she should have the best lessons and everything she needed. We both held our noses to the grindstone just as tight as ever we could, and Mercedes was brought up pretty well, I think, considering.

"She gave that first concert in Warsaw—we'd moved to Warsaw—and then Pavelek seemed to go to pieces. He just drank himself to death. Well, after that, rich relations of Mercedes's turned up—cousins of the Bastidas', who lived in Paris. They hadn't lifted a finger to help Dolores, or me with the baby after Dolores died; but they remembered about us now Mercedes was famous and made us come to live with them in Paris and said they had first claim on Mercedes. I didn't take to the Bastidas. But I stayed on because of Mercedes. I got to be a sort of nurse for her, you may say. Well, as she got older, and prettier and prettier, and everyone just crazy about her, I saw she didn't have much use for me. I didn't judge her too hard; but I began to see through her then. She'd behaved mighty bad to me again and again, she used to fly at me and bite me and tear my hair, when she was a child, if I thwarted her; but I always believed she really loved me; perhaps she did, as much as she can. But after these rich folks turned up and her life got so bright and easy she just seemed to forget all about me. So I went home.

"I stayed home for four or five years and then Mercedes sent for me. She used to write now and then to her 'Dearest Tallie' as she always called me, and I'd heard all about how she'd come out in Paris and Vienna as a great pianist, and how she'd quarrelled with her relations and how she'd run away with a young English painter and got married to him. It was an awful silly match, and they'd all opposed it; but it pleased me somehow. I thought it showed that Mercedes was soft-hearted like her mother, and unworldly. Well, she wrote that she was miserable and that her husband was a fiend and broke her heart and that she hated all her relations and they'd all behaved like serpents to her—Mercedes is always running across serpents—and how I was the only true friend she had and the only one who understood her, and how she longed for her dear Tallie. So I sold out again—I'd just started a sort of little farm near the old place in Maine, raising chickens and making jam—and came over again. I don't know what it is about Mercedes, but she gets a hold over you. And guess I always felt like she was my own baby. I had a baby, but it died when it was born. Well, she was living in Paris then and they had a fine flat and a big studio, and when Mercedes got into a passion with her husband she'd take a knife and slash up his canvases. She quarrelled with him day and night, and I wasn't long with them before I saw that it was all her fault and that he was a weak, harmless sort of young creature—he had yellow hair, longish, and used to wear a black velvet cap and paint sort of dismal pictures of girls with long necks and wild sort of eyes—but that the truth was she was sick of him and wanted to marry the Baron von Marwitz.

"You can commence to get hold of the story now, Karen. You remember the Baron. A sad, stately man he was, as cultured and intellectual as could be and going in the best society. Mercedes had found pretty quick that there wasn't much fun in being married to a yellow-haired boy who lived on the money she made and wasn't a mite in society. And the Baron was just crazy over her in his dignified, reverential way. Poor fellow!" said Mrs. Talcott pausing in a retrospect over this vanished figure, "Poor fellow! I guess he came to rue the day he ever set eyes on her. Well, Mercedes made out to him how terrible her life was and how she was tied to a dissipated, worthless man who lived on her and was unfaithful to her. And it's true that Baldwin Tanner behaved as he shouldn't; but he was a weak creature and she'd disillusionized him so and made him so miserable that he just got reckless. And he'd never asked any more than to live in a garret with her and adore her, and paint his lanky people and eat bread and cheese; he told me so, poor boy; he just used to lay his head down on my lap and cry like a baby sometimes. But Mercedes made it out that she was a victim and he was a serpent; and she believed it, too; that's the power of her; she's just determined to be in the right always. So at last she made it all out. She couldn't divorce Baldwin, being a Catholic; but she made it out that she wasn't really married to him. It appears he didn't get baptized by his folks; they hadn't believed in baptizing; they were free-thinkers. And the Baron got his powerful friends to help and they all set to work at the Pope, and they got him to fix it up, and Mercedes's marriage was annulled and she was free to marry again. That's what was in her mind in sending for me, you see; she'd quarrelled with her folks and she wanted a steady respectable person who knew all about her to stand by her and chaperon her while she was getting rid of Baldwin. Mercedes has always been pretty careful about her reputation; she's hardly ever taken any risks.

"Well, she was free and she married the Baron, and poor Baldwin got a nice young English girl to marry him, and she reformed him, and they're alive and happy to this day, and I guess he paints pretty poor pictures. And it makes Mercedes awful mad to hear about how happy they are; she has a sort of idea, I imagine, that Baldwin didn't have any right to get married again. I've always had a good deal of satisfaction over Baldwin," said Mrs. Talcott. "It's queer to realize that Mercedes was once just plain Mrs. Baldwin Tanner, ain't it? It was a silly match and no mistake. Well, it took two or three years to work it all out, and Mercedes was twenty-five when she married the Baron. I didn't see much of them for a while. They put me around in their houses to look after things and be there when Mercedes wanted me. She'd found out she couldn't get along without me in those two or three years. Mercedes was the most beautiful creature alive at that time, I do believe, and all Europe was wild about her. She and the Baron went about and she gave concerts, and it was just a triumphal tour. But after a spell I began to see that things weren't going smooth. Mercedes is the sort of person who's never satisfied with what she's got. And the Baron was beginning to find her out. My! I used to be sorry for that man. I'll never forget his white, sick face the first time she flew out at him and made one of her scenes. 'Emprisonne ma jeunesse,'" Mrs. Talcott quoted with a heavy accent. "That's what she said he'd done to her. He was twenty years older than Mercedes, the Baron. Mercedes always liked to have men who were in love with her hanging about, and that's what the trouble was over. The more they cared the worse she treated them, and the Baron was a very dignified man and didn't like having them around. And she was dreadful jealous of him, too, and used to fly out at him if he so much as looked at another woman; in her way I guess he was the person Mercedes cared for most in all her life; she respected him, too, and she knew he was as clever as she was and more so, and as for him, in spite of everything, he always stayed in love with her. They used to have reconciliations, and when he'd look at her sort of scornful and loving and sad all together, it would make her go all to pieces. She'd throw herself in his arms and cry and cry. No, she ain't all bad, Mercedes. And she thought she could make things all right with him after she'd let herself go; she depended on his caring for her so much and being sorry for her. But I saw well enough as the years went on that he got more and more depressed. He was a depressed man by nature, I reckon, and he read a sight of philosophy of the gloomy kind—that writer Schopenhauer was a favourite of his, I recollect, and Mercedes thought a sight of him, too—and after ten years or so of Mercedes I expect the Baron was pretty sick of life.

"Well, you came. You thought it was Mercedes who was so good to you, and it was in a way. But it was poor Ernst who really cared. He took to you the moment he set eyes on you, and he'd liked your father. And he wanted to have you to live with them and be their adopted daughter and inherit their money when they died. It had always been a grief to him that Mercedes wouldn't have any children. She just had a horror of having children, and he had to give up any hope of it. Well, the moment Mercedes realized how he cared for you she got jealous and they had a scene over you right off, in that hotel at Fontainebleau. She took on like her heart would break and put it that she couldn't bear to have any one with them for good, she loved him so. It was true in a way. I didn't count of course. He looked at her, sick and scornful and loving, and he gave way. That was why you were put to school. She tried to make up by being awful nice to you when you came for your holidays now and then; but she never liked having you round much and Ernst saw it and never showed how much he cared for you. But he did care. You had a real friend in him, Karen. Well, after that came the worst thing Mercedes ever did." Mrs. Talcott paused, gazing before her in the dimly lighted room. "Poor things! Poor Mercedes! It nearly killed her. She's never been the same since. And it was all her fault and she knows it and that's why she's afraid. That's why," she added in a lower voice, "you're sorry for her and put up with everything, because you know she's a miserable woman and it wouldn't do for her to be alone.

"A young man turned up. His name don't matter now, poor fellow. He was just a clever all-over-the-place young man like so many of them, thinking they know more about everything than God Almighty;—like this young man in a way, only not a bad young man like him;—and downright sick with love of Mercedes. He followed her about all over Europe and went to every concert she gave and laid himself out to please her in all the ways he could. And he had a great charm of manner—he was a Russian and very high-bred—and he sort of fascinated her, and she liked it all, I can tell you. Her youth was beginning to go, and the Baron was mighty gloomy, and she just basked in this young man's love, and pretty soon she began to think she was in love with him—perhaps she was—and had never loved before, and she certainly worked herself up to suffer considerably. Well, the Baron saw it. He saw she didn't treat him the way she'd treated the others; she was kind of humble and tender and distracted all the time. The Baron saw it all, but she never noticed that he was getting gloomier and gloomier. I sometimes wonder if things might have been different if he'd been willing to confide in me some. It does folks a sight of good if there's someone they can tell things to. But the Baron was very reserved and never said a word. And at last she burst out with a dreadful scene. You were with them; yes, it was that summer at Felsenschloss; but you didn't know anything about it of course. I was pretty much in the thick of it all, as far as Mercedes went, and I tried to make her see reason and told her she was a sinful woman to treat her husband so; but I couldn't hold her back. She broke out at him one day and told him he was like a jailor to her, and that he suffocated her talent and that he hung on her like a vampire and sucked her youth, and that she loved the other man. I can see her now, rushing up and down that long saloon on that afternoon, with the white blinds drawn down and the sun filtering through them, snatching with her hands at her dress and waving her arms up and down in the air. And the Baron sat on a sofa leaning on his elbow with his hand up over his eyes and watched her under it. And he didn't say one word. When she fell down on another sofa and cried and cried, he got up and looked at her for a moment; but it wasn't the scornful, loving look; it was a queer, dark, dead way. And he just went out. And we never saw him alive again.

"You know the rest, Karen. You found him. But no one knows why he did it, no one but you and me. He put an end to himself, because he couldn't stand it any longer, and to set her free. They called it suicidal mania and the doctors said he must have had melancholia for years. But I shan't ever forget his face when he went out, and no more will Mercedes. After he was gone she thought she'd never cared for anything in the world but him. She never saw that young man again. She wrote him a letter and laid the blame on him, and said he'd tried to take her from her adored husband and that she'd never forgive him and loathed the thought of him, and that he had made her the most wretched of women, and he went and blew his brains out and that was the end of him. I had considerable difficulty in getting hold of that letter. It was on him when he killed himself. But I managed to talk over the police and hush it up. Mercedes gave me plenty of money to manage with. I don't know what she thinks about that poor fellow; she's never named his name since that day. And she went on like a mad thing for two years or more. You remember about that, Karen. She said she'd never play the piano again or see anybody and wanted to go and be a nun. But she had a friend who was a prioress of a convent, and she advised her not to. I guess poor Mercedes wouldn't have stayed long in a convent. And the reason she was nice to you was because the Baron had been fond of you and she wanted to make up all she could for that dreadful thing in her life. She had you to come and live with her. You didn't interfere with anything any longer and it sort of soothed her to think it was what he'd have liked. She's fond of you, too. She wouldn't have put up with you for so long if she hadn't been. She'd have found some excuse for being quit of you. But as for loving you, Karen child, like you thought she did, or like you love her, why it's pitiful. I used to wonder how long it would be before you found her out."

Karen's face was hidden; she had rested it upon her hands, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, and she had not moved while Mrs. Talcott told her story. Now, as Mrs. Talcott sat silent, she stirred slightly.

"Tante! Tante!" she muttered. "My beautiful!"

Mrs. Talcott did not reply to this for some moments; then she laid her hand on Karen's shoulder. "That's it," she said. "She's beautiful and it most kills us to find out how cruel and bad she can be. But I guess we can't judge people like Mercedes, Karen. When you go through life like a mowing-machine and see everyone flatten out before you, you must get kind of exalted ideas about yourself. If anything happens that makes a hitch, or if anybody don't flatten out, why it must seem to you as if they were wrong in some way, doing you an injury. That's the way it is with Mercedes. She don't mean to be cruel, she don't mean to be bad; but she's a mowing-machine and if you get in her way she'll cut you up fine and leave you behind. And the thing for you to do, Karen, is to get out of her way as quick as you can."

"Yes, I am going," said Karen.

Again Mrs. Talcott sat silent. "I'd like to talk to you about that, Karen," she then said. "I want to ask you to give up going to Frau Lippheim. There ain't any sense in that. It's a poor plan. What you ought to do, Karen, is to go right back to your nice young husband."

Karen, who sat on as if crushed beyond the point where anything could crush her further, shook her head. "Do not ask me that, Mrs. Talcott," she said. "I can never go back to him."

"But, Karen, I guess you've got to own now that he was right and you were wrong in that quarrel of yours. I guess you'll have to own that it must have made him pretty sick to see her putting him in the wrong with you all the time and spoiling everything; and there's no one on earth can do that better than Mercedes."

"I see it all," said Karen. "But that does not change what happened between Gregory and me. He does not love me. I saw it plainly. If he had me back it would only be because he cares for conventions. He said cruel things to me."

"I guess you said cruel things to him, Karen."

Karen shook her head slightly, with weariness rather than impatience.

"No, for he saw that it was my loyalty to her—my love of her—that he was wounding. And he never understood. He never helped me. I can never go back to him, for he does not love me."

"Now, see here, Karen," said Mrs. Talcott, after a pause, "you just let me work it out. You'll have a good sleep and to-morrow morning I'll see you off, before Mercedes is up, to a nice little farm near here that I know about—just a little way by train—and there you'll stay, nice and quiet, and I'll not let Mercedes know where you are. And I'll write to Mr. Jardine and tell him just what's happened and what you meant to do, and that you want to go to Frau Lippheim; and you mark my words, Karen, that nice young husband of yours'll be here quicker than you can say Jack Robinson."

Karen had dropped her hands and was looking at her old friend intently. "Mrs. Talcott, you do not understand," she said. "You cannot write to him. Have I not told you that he does not love me?"

"Shucks!" said Mrs. Talcott. "He'll love you fast enough now that Mercedes is out of the way."

"But, Mrs. Talcott," said Karen, rising and looking down at the old woman, whose face, in the dim light, had assumed to her reeling mind an aspect of dangerous infatuation—"I do not think you know what you are saying. What do I want of a man who only loves me when I cease to love my guardian?"

"Well, say you give up love, then," Mrs. Talcott persisted, and a panic seized Karen as she heard the unmoved tones. "Say you don't love him and he don't love you. You can have conventions, then—he wants that you say, and so can you—and a good home and a nice husband who won't treat you bad in any way. That's better than batting about the world all by yourself, Karen; you take my word for it. And you can take my word for it, too, that if you behave sensible and do as I say, you'll find out that all this is just a miserable mistake and that he loves you just as much as ever. Now, see here," Mrs. Talcott, also, had risen, and stood in her habitual attitude, resting heavily on one hip, "you're not fit to talk and I'm not going to worry you any more. You go to sleep and we'll see about what to do to-morrow. You go right to sleep, Karen," she patted the girl's shoulder.

The panic was deepening in Karen. She saw guile on Mrs. Talcott's storm-beaten and immutable face; and she heard specious reassurance in her voice. Mrs. Talcott was dangerous. She had set her heart on this last desire of her passionless, impersonal life and had determined that she and Gregory should come together again. It was this desire that had unsealed her lips: she would never relinquish, it. She might write to Gregory; she might appeal to him and put before him the desperate plight in which his wife was placed. And he might come. What were a wife's powers if she was homeless and penniless, and a husband claimed her? Karen did not know; but panic breathed upon her, and she felt that she must fly. She, too, could use guile. "Yes," she said. "I will go to sleep. And to-morrow we will talk. But what you hope cannot be. Good-night, Mrs. Talcott."

"Good-night, child," said Mrs. Talcott.

They had joined hands and the strangeness of this farewell, the knowledge that she might never see Mrs. Talcott again, and that she was leaving her to a life empty of all that she had believed it to contain, rose up in Karen so strongly that it blotted out for a moment her own terror.

"You have been so good to me," she said, in a trembling voice. "Never shall I forget what you have done for me, Mrs. Talcott. May I kiss you good-night?"

They had never kissed.

Mrs. Talcott's eyes blinked rapidly, and a curious contortion puckered her mouth and chin. Karen thought that she was going to cry and her own eyes filled with tears.

But Mrs. Talcott in another moment had mastered her emotion, or, more probably, it could find no outlet. The silent, stoic years had sealed the fount of weeping. Only that dry contortion of her face spoke of her deep feeling. Karen put her arms around her and they kissed each other.

"Good-night, child," Mrs. Talcott then said in a muffled voice, and disengaging herself she went out quickly.

Karen stood listening to the sound of her footsteps passing down the corridor. They went down the little flight of stairs that led to another side of the house and faded away. All was still.

She did not pause or hesitate. She did not seem to think. Swiftly and accurately she found her walking-shoes and put them on, her hat and cloak; her purse with its half-crown, its sixpence and its few coppers. Swiftly she laid together a change of underwear and took from her dressing-table its few toilet appurtenances. She paused then, looking at the ornaments of her girlhood. She must have money. She must sell something; yet all these her guardian had given her.

No; not all. Her little gold watch ticked peacefully, lying on the table beside her bed as it had lain beside her for so many years; her beautiful little watch, treasured by her since the distant birthday when Onkel Ernst had given it.

She clutched it tightly in her hand and it seemed to her, as she had once said to Gregory, that the iron drove deep into her heart and turned up not only dark forgotten things but dark and dreadful things never seen before.

She leaned against the table, putting the hand that held Onkel Ernst's watch to her eyes, and his agony became part of her own. How he had suffered. And the other man, the young, forgotten Russian. Mrs. Talcott's story became real to her as it had not yet been. It entered her; it filled her past; it linked itself with everything that she had been and done and believed. And the iron drove down deeper, until of her heart there seemed only to be left a deep black hole.



CHAPTER XXXVII

Mrs. Talcott had a broken night and it was like a continuation of some difficult and troubled dream when she heard the voice of Mercedes saying to her: "Tallie, Tallie, wake up. Tallie, will you wake! Bon Dieu! how she sleeps!"

The voice of Mercedes when she had heard it last had been the voice of passion and desperation, but its tone was changed this morning; it was fretful, feverishly irritable, rather than frantic.

Mrs. Talcott opened her eyes and sat up in bed. She wore a Jaeger nightgown and her head, with its white hair coiled at the top, was curiously unaltered by its informal setting.

"What do you mean by coming waking me up like this after the night you've given me," she demanded, fully awakened now. "Go right straight away or I'll put you out."

"Don't be a fool, Tallie," said Madame von Marwitz, who, in a silken dressing-gown and with her hair unbound, had an appearance at once childish and damaged. "Where is Karen? I've been to her room and she is not there. The door downstairs is unbolted. Is she gone out to walk so early?"

Mrs. Talcott sat still and upright in her bed. "What time is it?" she asked.

"It is seven. I have been awake since dawn. Do you imagine that I have had a pleasant night?"

Mrs. Talcott did not answer this query. She sprang out of bed.

"Perhaps she's gone to meet the bus at the cross-roads. But I told her I was going to take her. Tell Burton to come round with the car as quick as he can. I'll go after her and see that she's all right. Why, the child hasn't got any money," Mrs. Talcott muttered, deftly drawing on her clothes beneath her nightgown which she held by the edge of the neck between her teeth.

Madame von Marwitz listened to her impeded utterance frowning.

"The bus? What do you mean? Why is she meeting the bus?"

"To take her to London where she's going to the Lippheims," said Mrs. Talcott, casting aside the nightgown and revealing herself in chemise and petticoat. "You go and order that car, Mercedes," she added, as she buckled together her sturdy, widely-waisted stays. "This ain't no time for talk."

Madame von Marwitz looked at her for another moment and then rang the bell. She put her head outside the door to await the housemaid and, as this person made some delay, shouted in a loud voice: "Handcock! Jane! Louise! Where are you? Faineantes!" she stamped her foot, and, as the housemaid appeared, running; "Burton," she commanded. "The car. At once. And tell Louise to bring me my tea-gown, my shoes and stockings, my fur cloak, at once; but at once; make haste!"

"What are you up to, Mercedes?" Mrs. Talcott inquired, as Madame von Marwitz thrust her aside from the dressing-table and began to wind up her hair before the mirror.

"I am getting ready to go with you, parbleu!" Madame von Marwitz replied. "Is that you, Louise? Come in. You have the things? Put on my shoes and stockings; quickly; mais depechez-vous donc! The tea-gown—yes, over this—over it I say! So. Now bring me a motor-veil and gloves. I shall do thus."

Mrs. Talcott, while Louise with an air of profoundest gloom arrayed her mistress, kept silence, but when Louise had gone in search of the motor-veil she remarked in a low but imperative voice: "You'll get out at the roadside and wait for me, that's what you'll do. I won't have you along when I meet Karen. She couldn't bear the sight of you."

"Peace!" Madame von Marwitz commanded, adjusting the sash of her tea-gown. "I shall see Karen. The deplorable misunderstanding of last night shall be set right. Her behaviour has been undignified and underhanded; but I misunderstood her, and, pierced to the heart by the treachery of a man I trusted, I spoke wildly, without thought. Karen will understand. I know my Karen."

It was not the moment for dispute. Louise had re-entered with the veil and Madame von Marwitz bound it about her head, standing before the mirror, and gazing at herself, fixedly and unseeingly, with dark eyes set in purpled orbits. She turned then and swept from the room, and Mrs. Talcott, pinning on her hat as she went, followed her.

Not until they were speeding through the fresh, chill air, did Mrs. Talcott speak. Madame von Marwitz, leaning to one side of the open car, scanned the stretch of road before them, melancholy and monotonous under the pale morning sky, and Mrs. Talcott, moving round determinedly in her corner, faced her.

"I want to tell you, right now, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott, "that Karen's done with you. There's no use in your coming, for you'll never get her back. I've told her all about you, Mercedes;—yes, I ain't afraid of you and you know it;—I told her. I made up my mind to it last night after I'd seen you and heard all your shameful story and how you'd treated her. I made up my mind that you shouldn't get hold of her again, not if I could help it. The time had come to tell that child that her husband was right all along and that you ain't a woman to be trusted. She'd seen for herself what you could do, and I made a sure thing of it. I've held my tongue for all my life, but I spoke out last night. I want her to be quit of you for good. I want her to go back to her husband. Yes, Mercedes; I've burst up the whole concern."

Madame von Marwitz, her hand holding tightly the side of the car and her eyes like large, dark stones in her white face, was sitting upright and was staring at her. She could not speak and Mrs. Talcott went on.

"She knows all about you now; about you and Baldwin Tanner and you and Ernst, and about that pitiful young Russian. She knows how you treated them. She knows how it wasn't you but Ernst who was her real friend, and how you didn't want her to live with you. She knows that you're a mighty unfortunate creature and a mighty dangerous one; and what I advise you to do, Mercedes, is to get out here and go right home. Karen won't ever come back to you again, I'm as sure of it as I'm sure my name's Hannah Talcott."

They sped, with softly singing speed, through the chill morning air. The hard, tight, dark eyeballs still fixed themselves on the old woman almost lifelessly, and still she sat grasping the side of the car. She had the look of a creature shot through the heart and maintaining the poise and pride of its startled and arrested life. Mechanical forces rather than volition seemed to sustain her.

"Say, Mercedes, will you get out?" Mrs. Talcott repeated. And the rigid figure then moved its head slightly in negation.

They reached the cross-roads where a few carts and an ancient fly stood waiting for the arrival of the omnibus that plied between the Lizard and Helston. Karen was nowhere to be seen.

"Perhaps she went across the fields and got into the bus at the Lizard," said Mrs. Talcott. "We'll wait and see, and if she isn't in the bus we'll go on to Helston. Perhaps she's walking."

Madame von Marwitz continued to say nothing, and in a moment they heard behind them the clashing and creaking of the omnibus. It drew up at the halt and Karen was not in it.

"To Helston," said Mrs. Talcott, standing up to speak to the chauffeur.

They sped on before the omnibus had resumed its journey.

Tints of azure and purple crept over the moors; the whitening sky showed rifts of blue; it was a beautiful morning. Mrs. Talcott, keeping a keen eye on the surrounding country, became aware presently that Mercedes had turned her gaze upon her and was examining her.

She looked round.

There was no anger, no resentment, even, on the pallid face. It seemed engaged, rather, in a deep perplexity—that of a child struck down by the hand that, till then, had cherished it. It brooded in sick wonder on Mrs. Talcott, and Mrs. Talcott looked back with her ancient, weary eyes. Madame von Marwitz broke the silence. She spoke in a toneless voice. "Tallie—how could you?" she said. "Oh, Tallie—how could you have told her?"

"Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott, gently but implacably, "I had to. It was right to make sure you shouldn't get hold of her again. She had to go, and she had to go for good. If you want me to go, too, I will, but it's only fair to tell you that I never felt much sorrier for you than I do at this minute."

"There have been tragedies in my life," Madame von Marwitz went on in the low, dulled voice. "I have been a passion-tossed woman. Yes, I have not been guiltless. But how could you cut out my heart with all its scars and show it to my child?"

"It was right to do it, Mercedes, so as you shouldn't ruin her life. She's not your child, and you've shown her she's not. A mother don't behave so to her child, however off her head she goes."

"I was mad last night." The tears ran slowly down Madame von Marwitz's cheeks. "I can tell that to Karen. I can explain. I can throw myself on her mercy. I loved him and my heart was broken. One is not responsible. It is the animal, wounded to death, that shrieks and tears at the spear it feels entering its flesh."

"I'm awful sorry for you, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott.

And now, hiding her face in her hands and leaning back in her cushions, Madame von Marwitz began to weep with the soft reiterated sobbing of a miserable child. "I have no one left. I am alone," she sobbed. "Even you have turned against me."

"No, I haven't turned against you," said Mrs. Talcott. "I'm here." And presently, while Mercedes wept, Mrs. Talcott took her hand and held it.

They reached Helston and climbed the steep, stony road to the station. There was no sign of Karen. Mrs. Talcott got out and made inquiries. She might have gone to London by the train that left at dawn; but no one had noticed such a young lady. Mrs. Talcott came back to the car with her fruitless story.

Mercedes, by this time, had dried her eyes and was regaining, apparently, her more normal energies. "Not here? Not seen? Not heard of?" she repeated. "But where is she then?"

Mrs. Talcott stood at the door of the car and looked at her charge. "Well, I'm afraid she made off in the night, straight away, after I'd talked to her."

"Made off in the night?" A dark colour suddenly suffused Madame von Marwitz's face.

"Yes, that's it, I reckon. I must have said something to scare her about her going back to her husband. Perhaps she thought I'd bring him down without her knowing, and perhaps she wasn't far wrong. I'm afraid I've played the fool. She thought I'd round on her in some way and so she just lit out."

Madame von Marwitz stared at her. The expression of her face had entirely altered; there was no trace of the dazed and wretched child. Dark forces lit her eyes and the relaxed lines of her lips tightened.

"Get in," she commanded. "Tell him to drive back, and get in." And when Mrs. Talcott had taken her place beside her she went on in a low, concentrated voice: "Is it not possible that she has joined that vile seducer?"

Mrs. Talcott eyed her with the fixity of a lion-tamer. Their moment of instinctive closeness had passed. "Now see here, Mercedes," she said; "I advise you to be careful what you say."

"Careful! I am half mad! Between you all you will drive me mad!" said Madame von Marwitz with intensity of fury. "You fill Karen's mind with lies about my past—oh, there are two sides to every story! she shall hear my side!—you drive her forth with your threats to hand her over to the man she loathes, and she takes refuge—where else?—with that miscreant. Why not? Where else had she to go? You say that she had no money. We call now at the hotel. If he is gone, and if within the day we do not hear that she is with Lise, we will send at once for detectives."

"You'd better control yourself, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott. "If Karen ain't found it'll be a mighty ugly story for you to face up to, and if she's found it won't be all plain sailing for you either; you've got to pay the price for what you've done. But if it gets round that you drove her out and then spread scandal about her, you'll do for yourself—just keep your mind on that if you can."

"Scandal! What scandal shall I spread? If he disappears and she with him, will the facts not shriek aloud? If she is found she will be found by me. I will wire at once to Lise."

"We'll wire to Lise and we'll wire to Mr. Jardine, that's what we'll do. Karen may have changed her mind. She may have felt shy of telling me she had. She may have come to see that he's the thing she's got to hang on to. What I hope for is that if she ain't in London already with him, she's hiding somewhere about here and has sent for him herself."

"Ah, I understand your hope; it is of a piece with all your treachery," said Madame von Marwitz in a voice suffocated by conflicting angers. "If she is with her husband he, too, will hear the story—the false, garbled story of my crimes. He is my enemy, you know it; my malignant enemy; you know that he will spread this affair broadcast. And you can rejoice in this! You are glad for my disgrace and ruin!" Tears again streamed from her eyes.

"Don't take on so, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott. "If Karen's with her husband all they're likely to be thinking about is that he was right and has got her back again. Karen's bound to tell him something about what happened, and you can depend upon Karen for saying as little as she can. But if you imagine that you're going to be let off from being found out by that young man, you're letting yourself in for a big disappointment, and you can take my word for it. It's because he's right about you that Karen'll go back to him."

Madame von Marwitz turned her head away and fixed her eyes on the landscape.

They reached the little village near Les Solitudes, and at the little hotel, with its drowsy, out-of-season air, Mrs. Talcott descended, leaving Mercedes proudly seated in the car, indifferent to the possible gaze from above of her faithless devotee. Mrs. Talcott returned with the information that Mr. Drew was upstairs and not yet awake. "Go up. Go up to him," said the tormented woman, after a moment of realized relief or disappointment—who can say? "He may have seen her. He may have given her money for her journey. They may have arranged to meet later."

Mrs. Talcott again disappeared and she only returned after some ten minutes. "Home," she then said to Burton, climbing heavily into the car. "Yes, there he was, sleeping as peaceful as a dormouse in his silk pyjamas," she remarked. "I startled him some, I reckon, when I waked him up. No, he don't know anything about her. Wanted to jump up and look for her when I told him she was missing. Keep still, Mercedes—what do you mean by bouncing about like that—folks can see you. I talked to him pretty short and sharp, that young man, and I told him the best thing he could do now was to pack his grip-sack and clear out. He's going right away and he promised to send me a telegram from London to-night. He can catch the second train."

Madame von Marwitz leaned back. She closed her eyes. The car had climbed to the entrance of Les Solitudes and the fuchsia hedge was passing on each side. Mrs. Talcott, looking at her companion, saw that she had either actually fainted or was simulating a very realistic fainting-fit. Mercedes often had fainting-fits at moments of crisis; but she was a robust woman, and Mrs. Talcott had no reason to believe that any of them had been genuine. She did not believe that this one was genuine, yet she had to own, looking at the leaden eyelids and ashen face, that Mercedes had been through enough in the last twelve hours to break down a stronger person. And it was appropriate that she should return to her desolate home in a prostrate condition.

Mrs. Talcott, as often before, played her part. The maids were summoned; they supported Madame von Marwitz's body; Burton took her shoulders and Mrs. Talcott her feet. So the afflicted woman was carried into the house and upstairs and laid upon her bed.

Mrs. Talcott then went and sent telegrams to Frau Lippheim and to Gregory Jardine. She asked them to let her know if Karen arrived in London during the day. She had her answers that evening. That from Gregory ran—"Not seen or heard of Karen. What has happened? Write by return. Or shall I come to you?" The other was from the Lippheims' landlady and said that the Lippheims had returned to Germany four days before and that no one had arrived to see them.

The evening post had gone. Mrs. Talcott went out and answered Gregory by wire: "Writing to-morrow morning. We think Karen is in London. Stay where you are."



CHAPTER XXXVIII

Mrs. Talcott went early to Madame von Marwitz's room next morning, as soon, in fact, as she had seen her breakfast-tray carried away. She had shown Mercedes her telegrams the evening before, and Mercedes, lying on her bed where she had passed the day in heavy slumbers, had muttered, "Let me sleep. The post is gone. We can do nothing more till to-morrow." Like a wounded creature she was regaining strength and wholeness in oblivion. When Mrs. Talcott had gone softly into her room at bedtime, she had found her soundly sleeping.

But the fumes and torpors of grief and pain were this morning dispersed. Mercedes sat at the desk in her bedroom attired in a robe-de-chambre, and rapidly and feverishly wrote.

"I'm glad to see you're feeling better, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott, closing the door and coming to her side. "We've got a lot to talk over this morning. I guess we'll have to send for those detectives. What are you writing there?"

Madame von Marwitz, whose face had the sodden, slumbrous look that follows long repose, drew the paper quickly to one side and replied: "You may mind your affairs and leave me to mind my own. I write to my friend. I write to Mrs. Forrester."

"You hand me that letter, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott, in a mild but singularly determined tone, and after a moment Madame von Marwitz did hand it to her.

Mrs. Talcott perused the first page. Then she lifted her eyes to her companion, who, averting hers with a sullen look, fixed them on the sea outside. It was raining and the sea was leaden.

"Now just you listen to me, Mercedes Okraska," said Mrs. Talcott, heavily emphasizing her words and leaning the hand that held the letter on the writing-table, "I'll go straight up to London and tell the whole story to Mr. Jardine and Mrs. Forrester—the same as I told it to Karen with all that's happened here besides—I will as sure as my name's Hannah Talcott—if you write one word of that shameful idea to your friends. Lay down that pen."

Madame von Marwitz did not lay it down, but she turned in her chair and confronted her accuser, though with averted eyes. "You say 'shameful.' I say, yes; shameful, and true. She has not gone to her husband. She has not gone to the Lippheims. I believe that he has joined her. I believe that it was arranged. I believe that she is with him now."

"You can't look me in the eye and say you believe it, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott.

Madame von Marwitz looked her in the eye, sombrely, and she then varied her former statement. "He has pursued her. He has found her. He will try to keep her. He is a depraved and dangerous man."

"We'll let him alone. We're done with him for good and all, I guess. My point is this: don't you write any lies to your friends thinking that you're going to whiten yourself by blackening Karen. I'm speaking the sober truth when I say I'll go straight off to London and tell Mr. Jardine and Mrs. Forrester the whole story, unless you write a letter, right now, as you sit here, that I can pass."

Again averting her eyes, Madame von Marwitz clutched her pen in rigid fingers and sat silent.

"It is blackmail! Tyranny!" she ejaculated presently.

"All right. Call it any name you like. But my advice to you, Mercedes, is to pull yourself together and see this thing straight for your own sake. I know what's the matter with you, you pitiful, silly thing; it's this young man; it makes you behave like a distracted creature. But don't you see as plain as can be that what Karen's probably done is to go to London and that Mr. Jardine'll find her in a day or two. Now when those two young people come together again, what kind of a story will Karen tell her husband about you—what'll he think of you—what'll your friends think of you—if they all find out that in addition to behaving like a wild-cat to that poor child because you were fairly daft with jealousy, and driving her away—oh, yes you did, Mercedes, it don't do any good to deny it now—if in addition to all that they find out that you've been trying to save your face by blackening her character? Why, they'll think you're the meanest skunk that ever walked on two legs; and they'll be about right. Whereas, Mercedes," Mrs. Talcott had been standing square and erect for some time in front of her companion, and now, as her tone became more argumentative and persuasive, she allowed her tired old body to sag and rest heavily on one hip—"whereas if you write a nice, kind, loving, self-reproachful letter, all full of your dreadful anxiety and affection—why, if Karen ever sees it it'll soften her towards you perhaps; and it'll make all your friends sorry for you, too, and inclined to hush things up if Mr. Drew spreads the story around—won't it, Mercedes?"—Madame von Marwitz had turned in her chair and was staring before her with a deeply thoughtful eye.—"Why, it's as plain as can be, Mercedes, that that's your line."

"True," Madame von Marwitz now said. "True." Her voice was deep and almost solemn. "You are right. Yes; you are right, Tallie."

She leaned her forehead on her hand, shading her eyes as she pondered. "A letter of noble admission; of sorrow; of love. Ah! you recall me to my better self. It will touch her, Tallie; it is bound to touch her, is it not? She cannot feel the bitterness she now feels if she reads such a letter; is not that so, Tallie?"

"That's so. You've got it," said Mrs. Talcott.

Madame von Marwitz, however, continued to lean on her desk and to shade her eyes, and some moments of silence passed thus. Then, as she leaned, the abjectness of her own position seemed suddenly borne in upon her. She pushed back her chair and clutching the edge of the desk with both hands, gave a low cry.

Mrs. Talcott looked at her, inquiring, but unmoved.

"Oh—it is easy for you—standing there—watching my humiliation—making your terms!" Madame von Marwitz exclaimed in bitter, trembling tones. "You see me in the dust,—and it is you who strike me there. I am to drag myself—with precautions—apologies—to that child's feet—that waif!—that bastard!—that thing I picked up and made! I am to be glad because I may hope to move her to mercy! Ah!—it is too much! too much! I curse the day that I saw her! I had a presentiment—I remember it now—as I saw her standing there in the forest with her foolish face. I felt in my inmost soul that she was to bring me sorrow. She takes him from me! She puts me to shame before the world! And I am to implore her to take pity on me!"

She had extended her clenched hand in speaking and now struck it violently on the desk. The silver blotter, the candlesticks, the pen-tray and ink-stand leaped in their places and the ink, splashing up, spattered her white silk robe.

"There now," said Mrs. Talcott, eyeing her impassively, "you've gone and spoiled your nice dress."

"Damn the dress!" said Madame von Marwitz. Leaning her elbows on the desk and her face on her hands, she wept; the tears trickled between her fingers.

But in a very little while the storm passed. She straightened herself, found her lace-edged handkerchief and dried her eyes and cheeks; then, taking a long breath, she drew forward a pad of paper.

"I am a fool, am I not, Tallie," she remarked. "And you are wise; a traitor, yet wise. I will do as you say. Wait there and you shall see."

Mrs. Talcott now subsided heavily into a chair and for some fifteen minutes there was no sound but the scratching of Madame von Marwitz's pen and the deep sighs that from time to time she heaved.

Then: "So: will that do?" she asked, leaning back with the deepest of the sighs and handing the pages to Mrs. Talcott.

Her dark, cold eyes, all clouded with weeping, had a singularly child-like expression as she thus passed on her letter for inspection. And—as when she had stretched out her legs for Mrs. Talcott to put on her stockings—one saw beyond the instinctively confiding gesture a long series of scenes reaching back to childhood, scenes where, in crises, her own craft and violence and unscrupulous resource having undone her, she had fallen back in fundamental dependence on the one stable and inalienable figure in her life.

Mrs. Talcott read:

"My Friend—Dearest and best Beloved,—I am in the straits of a terrible grief.—I am blind with weeping, dazed from a sleepless night and a day of anguish.—My child, my Karen, is gone and, oh my friend, I am in part to blame.—I am hot of blood, quick of tongue, as you know, and you know that Karen is haughty, resentful, unwilling to brook reproof even from me. But I do not attempt to exonerate myself. I will open my heart to you and my friend will read aright and interpret the broken words. You know that I cared for Claude Drew; you guessed perhaps how strong was the hold upon me of the frail, ambiguous, yet so intelligent modern spirit. It was to feel the Spring blossom once more on my frosty branches when this young life fell at my knees and seemed to find in me its source and goal. Mine was a sacred love and pain mingled with my maternal tenderness when he revealed himself to me as seeking from me the lesser things of love, the things I could not give, that elemental soil of sense and passion without which a man's devotion so strangely withers,—I could give him water from the wells and light from the air; I could not give him earth. My friend, he was here when Karen came, and, already I had seen it, his love was passing from me. Her youth, her guilelessness, her courage and the loyalty of her return to me, aroused his curiosity, his indolent and—you will remember—his unsatisfied, passion. I saw at once, and I saw danger. I knew him to be a man believing in neither good nor evil, seeking only beauty and the satisfaction of desire. Not once—but twice, thrice, did I warn Karen, and she resented my warnings. She is a creature profoundly pure and profoundly simple and her stubborn spirit rests in security upon its own assurances. She resented my warnings and she repulsed my attempts to lead and guard her. Another difference had also come between us. I hoped to effect a reconciliation between her and her husband; I suggested to Karen that I should write to you and offer myself as an intermediary; I could not bear to see her young life ruined for my sake. Karen was not kind to me; the thought of her husband is intolerable to her and she turned upon me with bitterness. I was hurt and I told her so. She brought me to tears. My friend, it was late on the night of that day—the night before last—that I found her with Claude Drew in the garden; and found her in his arms. Do not misunderstand; she had not returned his love; she repulsed him as I came upon them; but I, in my consternation, my anger, my dismay, snatched her from him and spoke to them both with passionate reproof. I sent Karen to the house and remained behind to deal with the creature who had so betrayed my trust. He is now my avowed enemy. So be it. I do not see him again.

"At dawn, after a sleepless night, I went to Karen's room to take her in my arms and to ask her pardon for my harsh words. She was gone. Gone, my friend. Tallie tells me that she believed me to have said that unless she could obey me I must forbid her to remain under my roof. These were not my words; but she had misunderstood and had fiercely resented my displeasure. She told Tallie that she would go to the Lippheims,—for them, as I have told you, she has a deep affection. Tallie urged upon her that she should communicate with her husband, let him know what had happened, return to him—even if it were to blacken me in his eyes—and would to God that it had been so!—But she repulsed the suggestion with bitterness. It must also have filled her with terror lest we should ourselves make some further attempt to bring about a reconciliation; for it was in the night, and immediately after her talk with Tallie, that she went, although she and Tallie had arranged that she was to go to the Lippheims next day.

"We have wired to the Lippheims and find that they have left England. And we have wired to Mr. Jardine, and she is not with him. She may be on her way to Germany; she may be concealed in the country near here; she may be in London. Unless we have news of her to-morrow I send for a detective. Oh, to hold her in my arms! I am crushed to the earth with sorrow and remorse. Show this letter to her husband. I have no thought of pride.

"Your devoted and unhappy Mercedes."

Mrs. Talcott read and remained for some moments reflecting after she had read. "Well, I suppose that's got to do," she commented, "though I don't call it a satisfactory letter. You've fixed it up real smart, but it's a long way off the truth."

Madame von Marwitz, while Mrs. Talcott read, had been putting back the disordered strands of her hair, adjusting her laces, and dabbing vaguely with her handkerchief at the splashes of ink that disfigured the front of her dress—thereby ruining the handkerchief; she looked up sharply now.

"I deny that it is a long way off the truth."

"A long way off," Mrs. Talcott repeated colourlessly; "but I guess it'll have to do. I'm willing you should make the best story out for yourself you can to your friends, so long as Karen knows the truth and so long as you don't spread scandal about her. Now I'll write to Mr. Jardine."

Madame von Marwitz's eyes were still fixed sharply on her and a sudden suspicion leapt to them. "Here then!" she exclaimed. "You write in my presence as I have done in yours. And we go to the village together that I may see you post the self-same letter. I have had enough of betrayals!"

Mrs. Talcott allowed a grim smile to touch her lips. "My, but you're silly, Mercedes," she said. "Get up, then, and let me sit there. I'd just as leave I'm sure. You know I'm determined that Karen shall go back to her husband and that I'm going to do all I can so as she shall. So there's nothing I want to hide."

She took up the pen and Madame von Marwitz leaned over her shoulder and read as she wrote:

"Dear Mr. Jardine,—Mercedes and Karen have had a disagreement and Karen took it very hard and has made off, we don't know where. Go round to Mrs. Forrester and see what Mercedes has got to say about it. Karen will tell you her side when you see her. She feels very bad about you yet; and thinks things are over between you; but you hang on, Mr. Jardine, and it'll all come right. You'd better find out whether Karen's called at the Lippheims' and get a detective and try and trace her out. If she's with them in Germany I advise you to go right over and see her.—Yours sincerely,

"Hannah Talcott."

Mrs. Talcott, as she finished, heard that the breathing of Mercedes, close upon her, had become heavier. She did not look at her. She knew what Mercedes was feeling, and dreading; and that Mercedes was helpless.

"There's no reason under the sun why Handcock shouldn't take these letters as usual," she remarked; "but if you're set on it that you're being betrayed, put on your shoes and dress and we'll walk down and mail them together."



CHAPTER XXXIX

It was on the second morning after this that the letters were brought in to Madame von Marwitz while she and Mrs. Talcott sat in the music-room together.

The two days had told upon them both. The face of Mercedes was like a beautiful fruit, rain-sodden and gnawed at the heart by a worm. Mrs. Talcott's was more bleached, more desolate, more austere.

The one letter that Handcock brought to Mrs. Talcott was from Gregory Jardine:

"Dear Mrs. Talcott," it said, "Thank you for your kind note. I am very unhappy and only a little less unhappy than when Karen left me. One cause of our estrangement is, perhaps, removed; but the fact borne in upon me at the time of that parting was that, while she was everything in life to me, she hardly knew the meaning of the words love and marriage. I need not tell you that I will do all in my power to induce her to return to me, and all in my power to win her heart. It was useless to make any attempt at reconciliation while her guardian stood between us. I cannot pretend that I feel more kindly towards Madame von Marwitz now; rather the reverse. It is plain to me that she has treated Karen shamefully. You must forgive me for my frankness.—Sincerely yours,

"Gregory Jardine."

Mrs. Talcott when she looked up from this letter saw that Mercedes was absorbed in hers. Her expression had stiffened as she read, and when she had finished the hand holding it dropped to her side. She sat looking down in a dark contemplation.

Mrs. Talcott asked no question. United in the practical exigencies of their search for Karen, united in their indestructible relation of respective dependence and stability, which the last catastrophe had hardly touched—for Mercedes had accepted her betrayal with a singular passivity, as if it had been a force of nature that had overtaken her—there was yet a whole new region of distrust between them. She and Mercedes, as Mrs. Talcott cheerlessly imaged it, were like a constable and his captive adrift, by a curious turn of fortune, on the waters of a sudden inundation. Together they baled out water and worked at the oar, but both were aware that when the present peril was past a sentence had still to be carried out on one of them. Mercedes could not evade her punishment. If Karen were found Gregory Jardine must come to know that her guardian had, literally, driven her from her home. In that case it rested with Gregory's sense of mercy whether Mercedes should be exposed to the world or not. And after reading Gregory's letter Mrs. Talcott reflected that there was not much to hope of mercy from him. So she showed a tactful consideration of her companion's state of nerves by pressing her no further than was necessary.

On this occasion, however, there was no need for pressure; Mercedes, in her dismal plight, turned to her with the latest development of it.

"Ah," she said, while she still continued to gaze down fixedly, "this it is to have true friends. This is human loyalty. It is well."

"What's the matter, Mercedes?" Mrs. Talcott asked, as she was evidently invited to do.

"Read if you will," said Madame von Marwitz. She held out the letter which Mrs. Talcott rose to take.

It was from Mrs. Forrester and was full of sympathy for her afflicted friend, and full of sympathy for foolish, headstrong little Karen. The mingled sympathies rang strangely. She avowed self-reproach. She was afraid that she had precipitated the rupture between Karen and her husband, not quite, perhaps, understanding the facts. She had seen Gregory, she was very sorry for him. She was, apparently, sorry for everyone; except of course, Mr. Drew, the villain of the piece; but of Mr. Drew and of Mercedes's sacred love for him, she made no mention. Mrs. Forrester was fond, but she was wary. She had received, evidently, her dim thrust of disillusion. Mercedes had blamed herself and Mrs. Forrester did not deny that Mercedes must be to blame.

"Yes; she's feeling pretty sick," Mrs. Talcott commented when she had read. "The trouble is that anybody who knows how much Karen loved you knows that she wouldn't have made off like that without you'd treated her ugly. That'll be the trouble with most of your friends, I reckon. Who's your other letter from?"

Madame von Marwitz roused herself from her state of contemplation. She opened the second letter saying, tersely: "Scrotton."

"She ain't likely to take sides with Karen," Mrs. Talcott observed, inserting her hand once more in the stocking she was darning, these homely occupations having for the last few days been brought into the music-room, since Mercedes would not be left alone. "She was always just as jealous of Karen as could be."

She proceeded to darn and Madame von Marwitz to read, and as she read a dark flush mounted to her face. Clenching her hand on Miss Scrotton's letter, she brought it down heavily on the back of the chair she sat in. Then, without speaking, she got up, tossed the letter to Mrs. Talcott, and began to pace the room, setting the furniture that she encountered out of her way with vindictive violence.

"My Darling, Darling Mercedes," Miss Scrotton wrote, "This is too terrible. Shall I come to you at once? I thought this morning after I had seen Mrs. Forrester and read your heartbreaking letter that I would start to-day; but let me hear from you, you may be coming up to town. If you stay in Cornwall, Mercedes, you must not be alone; you must not; and I am, as you know, devoted heart and soul. If all the world turned against you, Mercedes, I should keep my faith in you. I need hardly tell you what is being said. Claude Drew is in London and though, naturally, he does not dare face your friends with his story, rumours are abroad. Betty Jardine does not know him, but already she has heard; I met her only a few hours ago and the miserable little creature was full of malicious satisfaction. The story that she has heard—and believes—and that London will believe—is the crude, gross one that facts, so disastrously, have lent colour to; you, in a fit of furious jealousy, driving Karen away. My poor, great, suffering friend, I need not tell you that I understand. Your letter rings true to me in every line, and is but too magnanimous.—Oh Mercedes!—had you but listened to my warnings about that wretched man. Do you remember that I told you that you were scattering your pearls before swine? And your exculpation of Karen did not convince me as it seemed to do Mrs. Forrester. A really guileless woman is not found—late at night—in a man's arms. I cannot forget Karen's origins. There must be in her the element of reckless passion. Mr. Drew is spreading a highly idealised account of her and says that to see you together was to see Antigone in the clutches of Clytemnestra. There is some satisfaction in knowing that the miserable man is quite distracted and is haunted by the idea that Karen may have committed suicide. Betty Jardine says that in that case you and he would have to appear at the inquest.—Oh, my poor Mercedes!—But I feel sure that this is impossible. Temper, not tragedy, drove Karen from you and it was on her part a dastardly action. I am seeing everybody that I can; they shall have my version. The Duchess is in the country; I have wired to her that I will go to her at once if you do not send for me; it is important that she should have the facts as I see them before these abominable rumours reach her. Dear Mrs. Forrester means, I am sure, to do loyally; you may count upon her to listen to no scandal; but its breath alarms and chills her: she does not interpret your letter as I do.

"Good-bye, my dear one. Wire to me please, at once. Ever and always ton Eleanor devouee."

"Well," Mrs. Talcott commented warily, folding the letter and glancing at Madame von Marwitz; "she don't let any grass grow under her feet, does she? Do you want her down?"

"Want her! Why should I want her! The insufferable fool!" cried Madame von Marwitz still striding to and fro with tigerish regularity. "Does she think me, too, a fool, to be taken in by her grimaces of loyalty when it is as apparent as the day that delight is her chief emotion. Here is her opportunity—parbleu!—At last! I am in the dust—and if also in the dock so much the better. She will stand by me when others fall away. She will defend the prostrate Titaness from the vultures that prey upon her and gain at last the significance she has, for so long, so eagerly and so fruitlessly pursued. Ah!—par exemple! Let her come to me expecting gratitude. I will spurn her from me like a dog!" Madame von Marwitz, varying her course, struck a chair aside as she spoke.

"Well, I shouldn't fly out at her if I was you," said Mrs. Talcott. "She's as silly as they make 'em, I allow, but it's all to the good if her silliness keeps her sticking to you through thick and thin. It's just as well to have someone around to drive off the vultures, even if it's only a scarecrow—and Miss Scrotton is better than that. She's a pretty brainy woman, for all her silliness, and she's pretty fond of you, too, only you haven't treated her as well as she thinks you ought to have, and it makes her feel kind of spry and cheerful to see that her time's come to show you what a fine fellow she is. Most folks are like that, I guess," Mrs. Talcott mused, returning to her stocking, "they don't suffer so powerful over their friends' misfortunes if it gives them a chance of showing what fine fellows they are."

"Friends!" Madame von Marwitz repeated with scorching emphasis. "Friends! Truly I have proved them, these friends of mine. Cowards and traitors all, or crouching hounds. I am to be left, I perceive, with the Scrotton as my sole companion." But now she paused in her course, struck by a belated memory. "You had a letter. You have heard from the husband."

"Yes, I have," said Mrs. Talcott, "and you may as well see it." She drew forth Gregory's letter from under the heap of darning appliances on her lap.

Madame von Marwitz snatched it from her and read it, once rapidly, once slowly; and then, absorbed again in dark meditations, she stood holding it, her eyes fixed on the ground.

"He ain't as violent as might be expected, is he?" Mrs. Talcott suggested. Distrust was abroad in the air between her and Mercedes; she offered the fact of Gregory's temperateness as one that might mitigate some anticipations.

"He is as insolent as might be expected," said Madame von Marwitz. She flung the letter back to Mrs. Talcott, resuming her pacing, with a bitter laugh. "And to think," she said presently, "that I hoped—but truly hoped—with all my heart—to reconcile them! To think that I offered myself to Karen as an intermediary. It was true—yes, literally true—what I told Mrs. Forrester—that I spoke to Karen of it—with all love and gentleness and that she turned upon me like a tigress."

"And you'll recollect," said Mrs. Talcott, "that I told you to keep your hands off them and that you'd made enough mischief as it was. Why I guess you did hope she'd go back. You wanted to get rid of Karen and to have that young man to yourself; that's the truth, but you didn't tell that to Mrs. Forrester."

"I deny it," said Madame von Marwitz; but mechanically; her thoughts were elsewhere. She still paced.

"Well," said Mrs. Talcott, "you'd better send that telegram to Miss Scrotton, telling her not to come, or you'll have her down here as soon as she's seen the Duchess."

"Send it; send it at once," said Madame von Marwitz. "Tell her that I do not need her. Tell her that I will write." The force of her fury had passed; counsels of discretion were making themselves felt. "Go at once and send it."

She paused again as Mrs. Talcott rose. "If Karen is not found within three days, Tallie, I go to London. I believe that she is in London."

Mrs. Talcott faced her. "If she's in London she'll be found as soon by Mr. Jardine as by you."

"Yes; that may be," said Mercedes, and discretion, now, had evidently the mastery; "but Karen will not refuse to see me. I must see her. I must implore her forgiveness. You would not oppose that, would you, Tallie?"

"No, I'd not oppose your asking her to forgive you," Mrs. Talcott conceded, "when she's got back to her husband. Only I advise you to stay where you are till you hear she's found."

"I will do as you say, Tallie," said Madame von Marwitz meekly. She went to the piano, and seating herself began to play the Wohltemperirtes Clavier.



CHAPTER XL

Six days had passed since Karen's disappearance. The country had been searched; London, still, was being examined, and the papers were beginning to break into portraits of the missing girl. Karen became remote, non-existent, more than dead, it seemed, when her face, like that of some heroine of a newspaper novelette, gazed at one from the breakfast-table. The first time that this happened, Madame von Marwitz, flinging the sheet from her, had burst into a violent storm of weeping.

She sat, on the afternoon of the sixth day, in a sunny corner of the lower terrace and turned the leaves of a book with a listless hand. She was to be alone till dinner-time; Tallie had gone in to Helston by bus, and she had the air of one who feels solitude at once an oppression and a relief. She read little, raising her eyes to gaze unseeingly over the blue expanses stretched beneath her or to look down as vaguely into the eyes of Victor, who lay at her feet. The restless spirit of the house had reached Victor. He lay with his head on his extended paws in an attitude of quiescence; but his ears were pricked to watchfulness, his eyes, as he turned them now and again up to his mistress, were troubled. Aware of his glance, on one occasion, Madame von Marwitz stooped and caressed his head, murmuring: "Nous sommes des infortunes, hein, mon chien." Her voice was profoundly sad. Victor understood her. Slightly thudding his tail he gave a soft responsive groan; and it was then, while she still leaned to him and still caressed his head, that shrill, emphatic voices struck on Madame von Marwitz's ear.

The gravelled nook where she sat, her garden chair, with its adjusted cushions, set against a wall, was linked by ascending paths and terraces to the cliff-path, and this again, though only through a way overgrown with gorse and bramble, to the public coast-guards' path along the cliff-top. The white stones that marked the way for the coast-guards made a wide detour behind Madame von Marwitz's property and this nearer egress to the cliff was guarded by a large placard warning off trespassers. Yet, looking in the direction of the voices, Madame von Marwitz, to her astonishment, saw that three ladies, braving the interdict, were actually marching down in single file upon her.

One was elderly and two were young; they wore travelling dress, and, as she gazed at them in chill displeasure, the features of the first became dimly familiar to her. Where, she could not have said, yet she had seen that neat, grey head before, that box-like hat with its depending veil, that firmly corseted, matronly form, with its silver-set pouch, suggesting, typical of the travelling American lady as it was, a marsupial species. She did not know where she had seen this lady; but she was a travelling American; she accosted one in determined tones, and, at some time in the past, she had waylaid and inconvenienced her. Madame von Marwitz, as the three trooped down upon her, did not rise. She pointed to the lower terrace. "This is private property," she said, and her aspect might well have turned the unwary visitors, Acteon-like, into stags, "I must ask you to leave it at once. You see the small door in the garden wall below; it is unlocked and it leads to the village. Good-day to you."

But, with a singularly bright and puckered look, the look of a surf-bather, who measures with swift eye the height of the rolling breaker and plunges therein, the elderly lady addressed her with extraordinary volubility.

"Baroness, you don't remember us—but we've met before, we have a mutual friend:—Mrs. General Tollman of St. Paul's, Minnesota.—Allow me to introduce myself again:—Mrs. Slifer—Mrs. Hamilton K. Slifer:—my girls, Maude and Beatrice. We had the privilege of making your acquaintance over a year ago, Baroness, at the station in London, just before you sailed, and we had some talks on the steamer to that perfectly charming woman, Miss Scrotton. I hope she's well. We're over again this year, you see; we pine for dear old England and come just as often as we can. We feel we belong here more than over there sometimes, I'm afraid,"—Mrs. Slifer laughed swiftly and deprecatingly.—"My girls are so often taken for English girls, the Burne-Jones type you know. We've got friends staying at Mullion, so we thought we'd just drop down on Cornwall for a little tour after we landed at Southampton, and we drove over this afternoon and came down by the cliff—we are just crazy about your scenery, Baroness—it's just the right setting for you—we've been saying so all day—to have a peek at the house we've heard so much about; and we don't want to disturb you, but it's the greatest possible pleasure, Baroness, to have this beautiful glimpse of you—with your splendid dog—how d' ye do, Victor—why I do believe he remembers me; we petted him so much at the station when your niece was holding him. We saw Mrs. Jardine the other day, Baroness—such a pleasant surprise that was, too—only we're sorry to see she's so delicate. The New Forest will be just the place for her. We stayed there three days after landing, because my Beatrice here was very sea-sick and I wanted her to have a little rest. We were simply crazy over it. I do hope Mrs. Jardine's getting better."

All this had been delivered with such speed, such an air of decision and purpose, that Madame von Marwitz, who had risen in her bewildered indignation and stood, her book beneath her arm, her white cloak caught about her, had found no opportunity to check the torrent of speech, and as these last words came as swiftly and as casually as the rest she could hardly, for a moment, collect her faculties.

"My niece? Mrs. Jardine?" she repeated, with a wild, wan utterance. "What do you say of her?"

It was at this moment that Miss Beatrice began, in the background, to adjust her camera. She told her mother and sister afterwards that she seemed to feel it in her bones that something was doing.

Mrs. Slifer, emerging from her breaker in triumph, struck out, blinking and smiling affably. "We heard all about the wedding in America," she said, "and we thought we might call upon her in London and see that splendid temple you'd given her—we heard all about that, too. I never saw a picture of him, but I knew her in a minute, naturally, though she did look so pulled down. Why, Baroness—what's the matter!"

Madame von Marwitz had suddenly clutched Mrs. Slifer's arm with an almost appalling violence of mien and gesture.

"What is the matter?" Madame von Marwitz repeated, shaking Mrs. Slifer's arm. "Do you know what you are saying? My niece has been lost for a week! The whole country is searching for her! Where have you seen her? When was it? Answer me at once!"