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Forrester still held her hand. "She is still very tired, so I cannot be sure; I hope so." She smiled calmly at Sir Alliston and Miss Scrotton who were talking together and then lifted her eyes to Gregory who stood near. "You know Mr. Jardine?" Mrs. Forrester asked, seeing the pleased recognition on the girl's face. "It was his first time last night."
Miss Scrotton, as she rose automatically to carry out this request, was feeling that it is possible almost to hate one's idols. She had transgressed, and she knew it, and Mercedes had been aware of what she had done and had punished her for it. She even wondered if the quick determination to accept Gregory as Karen's suitor hadn't been part of the punishment.
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?"
Mercedes knew that she had a pride in her cousin and had determined to humble it. She had perhaps herself to thank for having riveted this most disastrous match upon him. It was with a bitter heart that she walked on into the house. As she went in Mr. Claude Drew came out and Miss Scrotton gave him a chill greeting. She certainly hated Mr. Claude Drew.
Miss Scrotton had now taken a chair beside her and her fingers tapped a little impatiently as the Baroness's eye far from the thought of pearls and swine went over the letter. "Tiens, tiens," Madame von Marwitz repeated; "the little Karen is sought in marriage." "Really," said Miss Scrotton, "how very fortunate for the poor little thing.
Forrester would not have sat so long or listened so patiently to any other theme than the one that so absorbed them both and that so united them in their absorption. Miss Scrotton even suspected that a tinge of bland and kindly pity coloured Mrs. Forrester's readiness to sympathize.
Miss Scrotton looked about the terrace with its rhythmic tubs of flowering trees, its groups of chairs, its white silk parasols, and then wandered to the parapet to turn and glance up at the splendid copy of an Italian villa that rose above it. "It is really very beautiful, Mercedes," she observed.
Who is the young man, and how, in heaven's name, has she secured a young man in the wilds of Cornwall?" Madame von Marwitz made no reply. She was absorbed in another letter. And Miss Scrotton now perceived, with amazement and indignation, that the one laid down was written in the hand of Gregory Jardine.
The question gave Miss Scrotton an opportunity for almost ominous emphasis; she paused over it, holding Mrs. Forrester with a brooding eye. "He won't bore her," she then brought out. "What, never? never?" Mrs. Forrester questioned gaily. "Never, never," Miss Scrotton repeated. "He is too clever. He will keep her interested and uncertain." "Well," Mrs.
Gregory pursued his questions with a placid persistence that seemed to indicate real curiosity. "Good heavens, no!" Miss Scrotton said. "The epitome of the commonplace.
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