aid Gregory, smiling yet deeply touched. "I hope I
may be. I intend to be if she will have me."

"The child is mighty fond of you," said Mrs. Talcott. "And it's not as
if she took easy to people. She don't. She's never seemed to need folks.
But I can see that she's mighty fond of you, and what I want to say is,
even if it don't seem to work out like you want it to right away, you
hang on, Mr. Jardine; that's my advice; an old woman like me understands
young girls better than they understand themselves. Karen is so wrapped
up in Mercedes and thinks such a sight of her that perhaps she'll feel
she don't want to leave her and that sort of thing; but just you hang
on."

"I intend to," said Gregory. "I can't say how much I thank you for being
on my side."

"Yes; I'm on your side, and I'm on Karen's side; and I want to see this
thing put through," said Mrs. Talcott.

Something seemed to hover between them now, a fourth figure that must be
added to the trio they made. He wondered, if he did hang on successfully
and if it did work out as he intended that it should, how that fourth
figure would work in. He couldn't see a shared life with Karen from
which it could be eliminated, nor did he, of course, wish to see it
eliminated; but he did not see himself, either, as forming one of a band
of satellites, and the main fact about the fourth figure seemed to be
that any relation to it involved one, apparently, in discipleship. There
seemed even some disloyalty to Mrs. Talcott in accepting her sympathy
while anxieties and repudiations such as these were passing through his
mind; for she, no doubt, saw in Karen's relation to Madame von Marwitz
the chief asset with which she could present a husband; and he expected
Mrs. Talcott, now, to make some reference to this asset; but none came;
and if she expected from him some recognition of it, no expectancy was
visible in the old blue eyes fixed on his face. A silence fell between
them, and as it grew longer it grew the more consoling. Into their
compact of understanding she let him see, he could almost fancy, that
the question of Madame von Marwitz was not to enter.

Karen, when she appeared, was looking preoccupied, and after shaking his
hand and giving him, for a moment, the sweet, grave smile with which
they had parted, she glanced at the writing-table. "You are writing to
Tante, Mrs. Talcott?" she said. "You heard from her this morning?"

"Yes; I heard from her," said Mrs. Talcott.