near you? Have you not, behind her back,
permitted yourself to speak with scorn of the man she hoped I would
marry?"

Gregory paused, and in the pause, as he observed, Madame von Marwitz was
able to withhold for a moment her strange groans and gaspings while she
listened. "I don't think there has been any such effort," he said. "We
were both keeping up appearances, your guardian and I; and I think that
I kept them up best. As for Herr Lippheim, it was only when you accused
me of rudeness to him that I confessed how much it astonished me to find
that he was the man your guardian had wished you to marry. It does
astonish me. Herr Lippheim isn't even a gentleman."

"Enough!" cried Madame von Marwitz. She sprang to her feet. "Enough!"
she said, half suffocated. "It is the voice of the cage! We will not
stay to hear its standards applied. Come with me, Karen, that I may say
farewell to you."

She caught Karen by the arm. Her face was strange, savage, suffused.
Gregory went to open the door for them. "Base one!" she said to him.
"Ignominious one!"

She drew Karen swiftly along the passage and, still keeping her sharp
clasp of her wrist while she opened and closed the door of her room, she
sank, encircling her with her arms, upon the sofa, and wept loudly over
her.

Karen, too, was now weeping; heavy, shaking sobs.

"My child! My poor child!" Madame von Marwitz murmured brokenly after a
little time had gone. "I would have spared you this. It has come. We
have both seen it. And now, so that your life may not be ruined, I must
leave it."

"But Tante--my Tante--" sobbed Karen--Madame von Marwitz did not remember
that Karen had ever so sobbed before--"you cannot mean those words. What
shall I do if you say this? What is left for me?"

"My child, your life is left you," said Madame von Marwitz, holding her
close and speaking with her lips in the girl's hair. "Your husband's
love is left; the happiness that you chose and that I shall shatter if I
stay; ah, yes, my Karen, how deny it now? I see my path. It is plain
before me. To-night I go to Mrs. Forrester and to-morrow I breathe the
air of Cornwall."

"But Tante--wait--wait. You will see Gregory again? You will let him
explain? Oh, let me first talk with him! He says bitter things, but so
do you, Tante; and he does not mean to offend as much as you think."

At this, after a little pause, Madame von Marwitz drew herself slightly
away and put her handkerchief to her eyes