"Ah, that is right; that is a wife," she murmured. "Though, believe me, _cherie_, I did not know that I was so transgressing." And turning her glance on Gregory, "_Je vous fais mes compliments_," she added.

Karen said that he must bring his cigar into the drawing-room, for Tante would smoke her cigarette with him, and there, until bedtime, things went as well as they had at dinner--or as badly; for part of their badness, Gregory more and more resentfully became aware, was that they were made to seem to go well, from her side, not from his.

She had a genius, veritably uncanny for, with all sweetness and hesitancy, revealing him as stiff and unresponsively complacent. It was impossible for him to talk freely with a person uncongenial to him of the things he felt deeply; and, pertinaciously, over her coffee and cigarettes, it was the deep things that she softly wooed him to share with her.

He might be stiff and stupid, but he flattered himself that he wasn't once short or sharp--as he would have been over and over again with any other woman who so bothered him. And he was sincerely unaware that his courtesy, in its dry evasiveness, was more repudiating than rudeness.

When Karen went with her guardian to her room that night, the little room that looked so choked and overcrowded with the great woman's multiplied necessities, Madame von Marwitz, sinking on the sofa, drew her to her and looked closely at her, with an intentness almost tragic, tenderly smoothing back her hair.

Karen looked back at her very firmly.

"Tell me, my child," Madame von Marwitz said, as if, suddenly, taking refuge in the inessential from the pressure of her own thoughts, "how did you find our Tallie? I have not heard of that from you yet."

"She is looking rather pale and thin, Tante; but she is quite well again; already she will go out into the garden," Karen answered, with, perhaps, an evident relief.

"That is well," said Madame von Marwitz with quiet satisfaction. "That is well. I cannot think of Tallie as ill. She is never ill. It is perhaps the peaceful, happy life she leads--_povera_--that preserves her. And the air, the wonderful air of our Cornwall. I fixed on Cornwall for the sake of Tallie, in great part; I sought for a truly halcyon spot where that faithful one might end her days in joy. You knew that, Karen?"

"No, Tante; you never told me that."

"It is so," Madame von Marwitz continued to muse, her eyes on the fire, "It is so. I have given great thought to my Tallie's happiness. She has earned it." And after a moment, in the same quiet tone, she went on.

"This idea of yours, my Karen, of bringing Tallie up to town; was it wise, do you think?"

Karen, also, had been looking at the flames. She brought her eyes now back to her guardian. "Wasn't it wise, Tante? We had asked her to come and stay--long ago, you know."

"Had she seemed eager?"

"Eager? No; I can't imagine Mrs. Talcott eager about anything. We hoped we could persuade her, that was all. Why not wise, Tante?"

"Only, my child, that after the quiet life there, the solitude that she loves and that I chose for her sake, the pure sea air and the life among her flowers, London, I fear, would much weary and fatigue her. Tallie is getting old. We must not forget that Tallie is very old. This illness warns us. It does not seem to me a good plan. It was your plan, Karen?"

Karen was listening, with a little bewilderment. "It seemed, to me very good. I had not thought of Mrs. Talcott as so old as that. I always think of her as old, but so strong and tough. It was Gregory who suggested it, in the first place, and this time, too. When I told him that I was going he thought of our plan at once and told me that now I must persuade her to come to us for a good long visit. He is really very fond of Mrs. Talcott, Tante, and she of him, I think. It would please you to see them together."

Karen spoke on innocently; but, as she spoke, she became aware from a new steadiness in her guardian's look, that her words had conveyed some significance of which she was herself unconscious.

Madame von Marwitz's hand had tightened on hers. "Ah," she said after a moment. She looked away.

"What is it, Tante?" Karen asked.

Madame von Marwitz had begun to draw deep, slow breaths. Karen knew the sound; it meant a painful control. "Tante, what is it?" she repeated.

"Nothing. Nothing, my child." Madame von Marwitz laid her arm around Karen's shoulders and continued to look away from her.

"But it isn't nothing," said Karen, after a little pause. "Something that I have said troubles or hurts you."

"Is it so? Perhaps you say the truth, my child. Hurts are not new to me.

No, my Karen, no. It is nothing for us to speak of. I understand. But your husband, Karen, he must have found it thoughtless in me, indelicate, to force myself in when he had hoped so strongly for another guest."

A slow flush mounted to Karen's cheek. She kept silence for a moment, then in a careful voice she said: "No, Tante; I do not believe that."

"No?" said Madame von Marwitz. "No, my Karen?"

"He knew, on the contrary, that I hoped to have you soon--at any time that you could come," said Karen, in slightly trembling tones.

Madame von Marwitz nodded. "He knew that, as you tell me; and, knowing it, he asked Tallie; hoping that with her installed--for a long visit--my stay might be prevented. Do not let us hide from each other, my Karen. We have hidden too long and it is the beginning of the end if we may not say to each other what we see."

Sitting with downcast eyes, Karen was silent, struggling perhaps with new realisations.

Madame von Marwitz bent to kiss her forehead and then, resuming the tender stroking of her hair, she went on: "Your husband dislikes me. Let us look the ugly thing full in the face. You know it, and I know it, and--_parbleu!_--he knows it well. There; the truth is out. Ah, the brave little heart; it sought to hide its sorrow from me. But Tante is not so dull a person. The loneliness of heart must cease for you. And the sorrow, too, may pa.s.s away. Be patient, Karen. You will see. He may come to feel more kindly towards the woman who so loves his wife.

Strange, is it not, and a chastis.e.m.e.nt for my egotism, if I have still any of that frothy element lingering in my nature, that I should find, suddenly, at the end of my life--so near me, bound to me by such ties--one who is unwilling to trust me, oh, for the least little bit; so unwilling to accept me at merely my face value. Most people," she added, "have loved me easily."

Karen sat on in silence. Her guardian knew this apathetic silence, and that it was symptomatic in her of deep emotion. And, the contagion of the suffering beside her gaining upon her, her own fict.i.tious calm wavered. She bent again to look into the girl's averted face. "Karen, _cherie_," she said, and now with a quicker utterance; "it is not worse than I yet realise? You do not hide something that I have not yet seen.

It is dislike; I accept it. It is aversion, even. But his love for you; that is strong, sincere? He will not make it too difficult for me? I am not wrong in coming here to be with my child?"

Karen at length turned her eyes on her guardian with a heavy look. "What would you find too difficult?" she asked.

Madame von Marwitz hesitated slightly, taken aback. But she grasped in an instant her advantage. "That by being here I should feel that I came between you and your husband. That by being here I made it more difficult for you."

"I should not be happier if you were away--if what you think is true, should I?" said Karen.

"Yes, my child," Madame von Marwitz returned, and now almost with severity. "You would. You would not so sharply feel your husband's aversion for me if I were not here. You would not have it in your ears; before your eyes."

"I thought that you talked together quite easily to-night," Karen continued. "I saw, of course, that you did not understand each other; but with time that might be. I thought that if you were here he would by degrees come to know you, for he does not know you yet."

"We talked easily, did we not, my child, to shield you, and you were not more deceived by the ease than he or I. He does not understand me? I hope so indeed. But to say that I do not understand him shows already your wish to shield him, and at my expense. I do understand him; too well. And if there is this repugnance in him now, may it not grow with the enforced intimacy? That is my fear, my dread."

"He has never said that he disliked you."

"Said it? To you? I should imagine not, _parbleu_!"

"He has only said," Karen pursued with a curious doggedness, "that he did not feel that you cared for him to care."

"Ah! Is it so? You have talked of it, then? And he has said that? And did you believe it? Of me?"

But the growing pa.s.sion and urgency of her voice seemed to shut Karen more closely in upon herself rather than sweep her into impulsive confidence. There was a hot exasperation in Madame von Marwitz's eye as it studied the averted, stubborn head. "No," was the reply she received.

"No, no, indeed. It was not the truth that he said to you and you know that it was not the truth. Oh, I make no accusation against your husband; he believed it the truth; but you cannot believe that I would rest satisfied with what must make you unhappy. And how can you be happy if your husband does not care for me? How can you be happy if he feels repugnance for me? You cannot be. Is it not so? Or am I wrong?"

"No," Karen again repeated.

"Then," said Madame von Marwitz, and a sob now lifted her voice, "then do not let him put it upon me. Not that! Oh promise me, my Karen! For that would be the end."

Karen turned to her suddenly, and pa.s.sed her arms around her.

"Tante--Tante," she said; "what are you saying? The end? There could not be an end for us! Do not speak so. Do not. Do not." She was trembling.

"Ah--could there not! Could there not!" With the words Madame von Marwitz broke into violent sobs. "Has it not been my doom, always--always to have what I love taken from me! You love this man who hates me! You defend him! He will part you from me! I foresee it! From the first it has been my dread!"

"No one can ever part us, Tante. No one. Ever." Karen whispered, holding her tightly, and her face, bending above the sobbing woman, was suddenly old and stricken in its tormented and almost maternal love. "Tante; remember your own words. You gave me courage. Will you not be patient?

For my sake? Be patient, Tante. Be patient. He does not know you yet."