e station to meet her
and had driven with her to Mrs. Forrester's. But Miss Scrotton had been
there, too, almost tearful in her welcoming back of her great friend,
and there had been little opportunity for talk in the carriage. Tante
had smiled upon her, deeply, had held her hand, closely, and had asked,
with the playful air which forestalls gratitude, how she liked her
present. "You will see it, my Scrotton; a Bouddha in his shrine--of the
best period; a thing really rare and beautiful. Mr. Asprey told me of
it, at a sale in New York; and I was able to secure it. _Hein, ma
petite_; you were pleased?"

"Oh, Tante, my letter told you that," said Karen.

"And your husband? He was pleased?"

"He thought that it was gorgeous," said Karen, but after a momentary
hesitation not lost upon her guardian.

"I was sorely tempted to keep it myself," said Madame von Marwitz. "I
could see it in the music-room at Les Solitudes. But at once I felt--it
is Karen's. My only anxiety was for its background. I have never seen
Mr. Jardine's flat. But I knew that I could trust the man my child had
chosen to have beauty about him."

"It isn't exactly a beautiful room," Karen confessed, smiling. "It isn't
like the music-room; you won't expect that from a London flat--or from
us. But it is very bright and comfortable and, yes, pretty. I hope that
you will like my home."

Miss Scrotton, Karen felt, while she made these preparatory statements,
had eyed her in a somewhat gaunt manner; but she was accustomed to a
gaunt manner from Miss Scrotton, and Miss Scrotton's drawing-room,
certainly, was not as nice as Gregory's. Karen had not cared at all for
its quality of earnest effort. Miss Scrotton, not many years ago, had
been surrounded with art-tinted hangings and photographs from Rossetti,
and the austerity of her eighteenth-century reaction was now almost
defiant. Her drawing-room, in its arid chastity, challenged you, as it
were, to dare remember the aesthetics of South Kensington.

Karen did not feel that Gregory's drawing-room required apologies and
Tante had been so mild and sweet, if also a little absent, that she
trusted her to show leniency.

She had, as yet, to-day, said nothing about the Bouddha or the
background on which she found him. She talked to Gregory, while they
waited for tea, asking him a great many questions, not seeming, always,
to listen to his answers. "Ah, yes. Well done. Bravo," she said at
intervals, as he told her