s Scrotton had actually imagined, for
an ecstatic and solemn fortnight, that she stood first with her, Mrs.
Forrester had met her air of irrepressible triumph with a geniality in
which was no trace of grievance or humiliation. The downfall had been
swift; Mercedes had snubbed her one day, delicately and accurately, in
Mrs. Forrester's presence, and Miss Scrotton's cheek still burned when
she remembered it. There were thus all sorts of unspoken things between
her and Mrs. Forrester, and not the least of them was that her folly
should have endeared her. Miss Scrotton at once chafed against and
relied upon her old friend's magnanimity. Her intercourse with her was
largely made up of a gloomy demand for sympathy and a stately evasion of
it.

Mrs. Forrester now poured her out a second cup of tea, answering,
soothingly, "Yes, she is capricious. But what do you expect, my dear
Eleanor? She is a force of nature, above our little solidarities and
laws. What do you expect? When one worships a force of nature, _il faut
subir son sort_." It was kind of Mrs. Forrester to include herself in
these submissions.

"I had really built all my summer about the plans that we had made,"
Miss Scrotton said. "Mercedes was to have come back with me, I was to
have stopped in Cornwall for Karen's marriage and after my month here in
London I was to have joined her at Les Solitudes for August. Now August
is empty and I had refused more than one very pleasant invitation in
order to go to Mercedes. She isn't coming back for another three
months."

"You didn't care to go with the Aspreys to the Adirondacks?"

"How could I go, dear Mrs. Forrester, when I was full of engagements
here in London for July? And, moreover, they didn't ask me. It is rather
curious when one comes to think of it. I brought the Aspreys and
Mercedes together, I gave her to them, one may say, but, I am afraid I
must own it, they seized her and looked upon me as a useful rung in the
ladder that reached her. It has been a disillusionizing experience, I
can't deny it; but _passons_ for the Aspreys and their kind. The fact
is," said Miss Scrotton, dropping her voice a little, "the real fact is,
dear Mrs. Forrester, that the Aspreys aren't responsible. It wasn't for
them she'd have stayed, and I think they must realize it. No, it is all
Claude Drew. He is at the bottom of everything that I feel as strange
and altered in Mercedes. He has an unholy influence over her, oh, yes, I
mean