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The photographs, too, from their room, not those of him, but those of Tante; of her father; and a half a dozen little porcelain and silver trinkets from the drawing-room, presents and purchases particularly hers. It was right, quite right, that he should send them. She knew it. It was right that he should accept their parting as final.
Karen, also, had been looking at the flames. She brought her eyes now back to her guardian. "Wasn't it wise, Tante? We had asked her to come and stay long ago, you know." "Had she seemed eager?" "Eager? No; I can't imagine Mrs. Talcott eager about anything. We hoped we could persuade her, that was all. Why not wise, Tante?"
But it is to be our own small treat; yours and mine. Your husband will lend you to me for those two days." Holding the girl's hand Madame von Marwitz smiled indulgently at her, with eyes only for her. Betty, however, was listening. "But cannot Gregory come, too, Tante?" Karen questioned, her pleasure dashed.
'Fegs! sais Pat, 'this gun was made for a squint eye, for I can't get a right strait sight of the critter, either side. So I fixt it for him and told him which eye to sight by. 'An excellent gun entirely, sais Pat, 'but it tante made like the rifles we have. "Ain't they strange critters, them Irish, Squire?
It tante one stranger in a thousand could take them down, for if he begins at the top they get awfully tangled, and if he pulls the wrong way, the harder he hauls the tighter they get.
The fear that had come on the night of her arrival pressed closely on Karen then, but, more closely still, the pain for Tante. Tante's clear dignity was blurred; her image, in its rebuffed and ineffectual autocracy, became hovering, uncertain, piteous.
It was as though, in taking refuge with Tante, she had leaped from a great height, seeing security beneath, and as though, alighting, she slipped and stumbled on a sloping surface with no foothold anywhere. Since she came, there had been only this sliding, sliding, and now it seemed to be down to unseen depths. For this was more and worse than the first fear of her coming.
Karen felt herself tremble as she scrutinized the funereal shape. There was no refuge with Mrs. Talcott. Mrs. Talcott holding her urn was worse than the lonely fears. And, for those two or three days of balmy, melancholy spring, the lonely fears did not press so closely. They wheeled far away against the blue. Tante was kinder to her and was more aware of her.
The fair, or rather that part of the fair where the dancers and diners most did congregate, was all ablaze with lights, and noisy with brass bands as we came out. Ma tante, who was somewhat tired, and had been dozing for the last half hour over her coffee and liqueure, was impatient to get back to Paris.
Karen took his arm as he steered her towards the luggage. "It is only put off, I hope, that visit," she said, "because I heard this morning, Gregory, and wired to you then, that Tante asks if she may come to us next week." Her voice was not artificial; it expressed determination as well as gentleness and seemed to warn him that he must not show her if he were not pleased.
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