then, Karen?"

Still with her eyes hidden the girl hesitated as if bewildered by the
pressure of new realisations. "You would leave me much alone? You would
not talk to me? I should be quiet?"

"Oh, my Karen--quiet--quiet--" Madame von Marwitz was now sobbing. "You
will send for me if you feel that you can see me; unless you send I do
not obtrude myself on you. You will have an attendant of your own. All
shall be as you wish."

"And when I am free I may choose my own life?"

"Free! free! the world before you! all that I have at your feet, to
spurn or stoop to!" Tante moaned incoherently.

"When will it be--that we must go?" Karen then, more faintly, asked.
Madame von Marwitz had risen to her feet. In her ecstasy of gladness she
could have clapped her hands above her head and danced. And the strong
control she put upon herself gave to her face almost the grimace of a
child that masters its weeping. She was drawn from her well. She stood
upon firm ground. "In two days, my child, if you are strong enough. In
two days we will set sail."

"In two days," Karen repeated. And, dully, she repeated again; "I come
with you in two days."

Madame von Marwitz now noticed that tears ran from under the hand. These
tears of Karen's alarmed her. She had not wept at all before to-day.

"My child is worn and tired. She would rest. Is it not so? Shall I leave
her?" she leaned above the girl to ask.

"Yes; I am tired," said Karen.

And leaning there, above the hidden face, above the heart wrung with its
secret agony, in all her ecstasy and profound relief, Madame von Marwitz
knew one of the bitterest moments of her life. She had gained safety.
But what was her loss, her irreparable loss? In the dark little
staircase she leaned, as on the day of her coming, against the wall, and
murmured, as she had murmured then: "_Bon Dieu! Bon Dieu!_" But the
words were broken by the sobs that, now uncontrollably, shook her as she
stumbled on in the darkness.

CHAPTER XLV

Some years had passed since Mrs. Talcott had been in London, and it
seemed to her, coming up from her solitudes, noisier, more crowded, more
oppressive than when she had seen it last. She had a jaded yet an acute
eye for its various aspects, as she drove from Paddington towards St.
James's, and a distaste, born of her many years of life in cities, took
more definite shape in her, even while the excitement of the movement
and uproar accompanied not inappropriately t