"You have perhaps a message to me, Mrs. Forrester, from Tante," she said.

"No, Karen, no," Mrs. Forrester with irrepressible severity returned. "I have no message for you. Any message, I think should come from your husband and not from your guardian."

Karen sat silent, her eyes moving away from her visitor's face and fixing themselves on the wall above her head.

The impulse that had brought Mrs. Forrester was suffering alterations.

Gregory had revealed the case to her as worse than she had supposed; Karen emphasized the revelation. And what of Mercedes between these two young egoists? "I must ask you, Karen," she said, "whether you realise how Gregory has behaved, to the woman to whom you, and he, owe so much?"

Karen continued to look fixedly at the wall and after a moment of deliberation replied: "Tante did not speak rightly to Gregory, Mrs.

Forrester. She lost her temper very much. You know that Tante can lose her temper."

Mrs. Forrester, at this, almost lost hers. "You surprise me, Karen. Your husband had spoken insultingly of her friends--and yours--to her. Why attempt to shield him? I heard the whole story, in detail, from your guardian, you must remember."

Again Karen withdrew into a considering silence; but, though her face remained impa.s.sive, Mrs. Forrester observed that a slight flush rose to her cheeks.

"Gregory did not intend Tante to overhear what he said," she produced at last. "It was said to me--and I had questioned him--not to her. Tante came in by chance. It is not likely, Mrs. Forrester, that my version would differ in any way from hers."

"You mustn't take offence at what I say, Karen," Mrs. Forrester spoke with more severity; "your version does differ. To my astonishment you seem actually to defend your husband."

"Yes; from what is not true: that is not to differ from Tante as to what took place." Karen brought her eyes to Mrs. Forrester's.

"From what is not true. Very well. You will not deny that he so intensely dislikes your guardian and has shown it so plainly to her that she has had to leave you. You will not deny that, Karen?"

"No. I will not deny that," Karen replied.

"My poor child--it is true, and it is only a small part of the truth. I don't know what Gregory has said to you in private, but even Mercedes had not prepared me for what he said to me this morning."

"What did he say to you this morning, Mrs. Forrester?"

"He believes her to be a bad woman, Karen; do you realise that; has he told you that; can you bear it? Dangerous, unscrupulous, tyrannous, devoured by egotism, were the words he used of her. I shall not forget them. He accused her of hypocrisy in her feeling for you. He hoped that you might never see her again. It is terrible, Karen. Terrible. It puts us all--all of us who love Mercedes, and you through her, into the most impossible position."

Karen sat, her head erect, her eyes downcast, with a rigidity of expression almost torpid.

"Do you see the position he puts us in, Karen?" Mrs. Forrester went on with insistence. "Have you had the matter out with Gregory? Did you realise its gravity? I must really beg you to answer me."

"I have not yet spoken with my husband," said Karen, in a chill, lifeless tone.

"But you will? You cannot let it pa.s.s?"

"No, Mrs. Forrester. I will not let it pa.s.s."

"You will insist that he shall make a full apology to Mercedes?"

"Is he to apologise to her for hating her?" Karen at this asked suddenly.

"For hating her? What do you mean?" Mrs. Forrester was taken aback.

"If he is to apologise," said Karen, in a still colder, still more lifeless voice, "it must be for something that can be changed. How can he apologise to her for hating her if he continues to hate her?"

"He can apologise for having spoken insultingly to her."

"He has not done that. It was Tante who overheard what she was not intended to hear. And it was Tante who spoke with violence."

"It amazes me to hear you put it on her shoulders, Karen. He can apologise, then, for what he has said to me," said Mrs. Forrester with indignation. "You will not deny that what he said of her to me was insulting."

"He is to tell her that he has said those words and then apologise, Mrs.

Forrester? Oh, no; you do not think what you say."

"Really, my dear Karen, you have a most singular fashion of speaking to a person three times your age!" Mrs. Forrester exclaimed, the more incensed for the confusion of thought into which the girl's persistence threw her. "The long and short of it is that he must make it possible for Mercedes to meet him, with decency, in the future."

"But I do not know how that can be," said Karen, rising as Mrs.

Forrester rose; "I do not know how Tante, now, can see him. If he thinks these things and does not say them, there may be pretence; but if he says them, to Tante's friends, how can there be pretence?"

There was no appeal in her voice. She put the facts, so evident to herself, before her visitor and asked her to look at them. Mrs.

Forrester was suddenly aware that her advice might have been somewhat hasty. She also felt suddenly as though, on a reconnoitring march down a rough but open path, she found herself merging in the gloomy mysteries of a forest. There were hidden things in Karen's voice.

"Well, well," she said, taking the girl's hand and casting about in her mind for a retreat; "that's to see it as hopeless, isn't it, and we don't want to do that, do we? We want to bring Gregory to reason, and you are the person best fitted to do that. We want to clear up these dreadful ideas he has got into his head, heaven knows how. And no one but you can do it. No one in the world, my dear Karen, is more fitted than you to make him understand what our wonderful Tante really is.

There is the trouble, Karen," said Mrs. Forrester, finding now the original clue with which she had started on her expedition; "he shouldn't have been able, living with you, seeing your devotion, seeing from your life, as you must have told him of it, what it was founded on, he shouldn't have been able to form such a monstrous conception of our great, dear one. You have been in fault there, my dear, you see it now, I am sure. At the first hint you should have made things clear to him. I know that it is hard for a young wife to oppose the man she loves; but love mustn't make us cowardly," Mrs. Forrester murmured on more cheerfully as they moved down the pa.s.sage, "and Gregory will only love you more wisely and deeply if he is made to recognize, once for all, that you will not sacrifice your guardian to please him."

They were now at the door and Karen had not said a word.

"Well, good-bye, my dear," said Mrs. Forrester. Oddly she did not feel able to urge more strongly upon Karen that she should not sacrifice her guardian to her husband. "I hope I've made things clearer by coming. It was better that you should, realize just what your guardian's friends felt--and would feel--about it, wasn't it?" Karen still made no reply and on the threshold Mrs. Forrester paused to add, with some urgency: "It was right, you see that, don't you, Karen, that you should know what Gregory is really feeling?"

"Yes," Karen now a.s.sented. "It is better that I should know that."

CHAPTER XXVIII

Gregory when he came in that evening thought at first, with a pang of fear, that Karen had gone out. It was time for dressing and she was not in their room. In the drawing-room it was dark; he stood in the doorway for a moment and looked about it, sad and tired and troubled, wondering if Karen had gone to Mrs. Forrester's, wondering whether, in her grave displeasure with him, she had even followed her guardian. And then, from beside him, came her voice. "I am here, Gregory. I have been waiting for you."

His relief was so intense that, turning up the lights, seeing her sitting there on a little sofa near the door, he bent involuntarily over her to kiss her.

But her hand put him away.

"No; I must speak to you," she said.

Gregory straightened himself, compressing his lips.

Karen had evidently not thought of changing. She wore her dark-blue silk dress. She had, indeed, been sitting there since Mrs. Forrester went. He looked about the room, noting, with dull wonder, the grouped chairs, and open piano. "You have had people here?"

"Yes. The Lippheims came and played to me. I would have written to them and told them not to come; but I forgot. And Mrs. Forrester has been here."

"Quite a reception," said Gregory. He walked to the window and looked out. "Well," he said, not turning to his wife, "what have you to say to me, Karen?" His tone was dry and even ironic.