idly, she were willing to be undressed,
body or soul, by her old nurse and guardian. But after a moment, and
with sudden indignation, she took up one of Mrs. Talcott's sentences.

"A bother to me? I am very fond of Karen. I am devoted to Karen. I
should much like to know what right you have to intimate that my feeling
for her isn't sincere. My life proves the contrary. As for saying that
it is my fault, that is merely your habit. Everything is always my fault
with you."

"It always has been, as far as I've been able to keep an eye on your
tracks," Mrs. Talcott remarked.

"Well, this is not. I deny it. I absolutely," said Madame von Marwitz,
and now with some excitement, "deny it. Did I not give her to him? Did I
not go to them with tenderest solicitude and strive to make possible
between him and me some relation of bare good fellowship? Did I not curb
my spirit, and it is a proud and impatient one, as you know, to endure,
lest she should see it, his veiled insolence and hostility? Oh! when I
think of what I have borne with from that young man, I marvel at my own
forbearance. I have nothing to reproach myself with, Tallie; nothing;
and if his life is ruined I can say, with my hand on my heart,"--Madame
von Marwitz laid it there--"that he alone is to blame for it. A more
odious, arrogant, ignorant being," she added, "I have never encountered.
Karen is well rid of him."

Mrs. Talcott remained unmoved. "You don't like him because he don't like
you and that's about all you've got against him, I reckon, if the truth
were known," she said. "You can make yourself see it all like that if
you've a mind to, but you can't make me; I know you too well, Mercedes.
You were mad at him because he didn't admire you like you're used to
being admired, and you went to work pinching and picking here and there,
pretending it was all on Karen's account, but really so as you could get
even with him. You couldn't stand their being happy all off by
themselves without you. Why I can see it all as plain and clear as if
I'd been there right along. Just think of your telling that poor deluded
child that you wanted her to make her husband like you. That was a nice
way, wasn't it, for setting her heart at rest about you and him. If you
didn't like him and saw he didn't like you, why didn't you keep your
mouth shut? That's all you had to do, and keep out of their way all you
could. If you'd been a stupid woman there might have been some excuse
for y