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"Listen to me, Karen," she sobbed, "The world knows but one side of me you have known but one side; even Tallie, who knows so much, who understands so much does not know the other the dark and tortured soul. I am not a good woman, Karen, the blood that flows in my veins is tainted, ambiguous. I have sinned.
Madame von Marwitz sent her presents from Paris; a wonderful white silk dressing-gown; a box of chocolate; a charming bit of old enamel picked up in a rive gauche curiosity shop. Then one day she wrote to say that Tallie had been quite ill povera vecchia and would Karen be a kind, kind child and run down and see her at Les Solitudes. Gregory had not forgotten the plan for having Mrs.
Drew spreads the story around won't it, Mercedes?" Madame von Marwitz had turned in her chair and was staring before her with a deeply thoughtful eye. "Why, it's as plain as can be, Mercedes, that that's your line." "True," Madame von Marwitz now said. "True." Her voice was deep and almost solemn. "You are right. Yes; you are right, Tallie."
A dry, hard desolation filled her. "May I go to my room, Tante?" "Yes, my child. Go to your room. You will find Tallie. Tallie is in the house, I think or did I send her in to Helston? no, that was for to-morrow." She held Karen's hand at a stretch of her arm while she seemed, with difficulty still, to collect her thoughts. "But I will come with you myself. Yes; that is best. Wait here, Claude."
"You are weary, my Karen; you must rest; is it not so? I will send Tallie to you. You will see Tallie she is a perfection of discretion; you do not shrink from Tallie. And you need tell her nothing; she will not question you. Between ourselves; is it not so? Yes; that is best. For the present. I will come again, later I have guests, a guest, you see. Rest here, my Karen."
When you are my only stay in life, the only thing near me in the world you and Tallie the thing that I have thought of as mine as if you were my child. And if you came to me now you would give still more. If it is known that you will not return that you will not forgive me and come with me I am disgraced, my child. All the world will believe that I have been cruel to you.
"What do you mean by coming waking me up like this after the night you've given me," she demanded, fully awakened now. "Go right straight away or I'll put you out." "Don't be a fool, Tallie," said Madame von Marwitz, who, in a silken dressing-gown and with her hair unbound, had an appearance at once childish and damaged. "Where is Karen? I've been to her room and she is not there.
"She is a wise person, Tallie; wise, silent, discreet. And I find her looking well; but very, very well; this air preserves her. And how old is Tallie now?" she mused. Though she talked so sweetly there was, Karen felt it now, a perfunctoriness in Tante's remarks. She was, for all the play of her nimble fancy, preoccupied, and the sound of the motor-horn below seemed a signal for release.
Talcott had a broken night and it was like a continuation of some difficult and troubled dream when she heard the voice of Mercedes saying to her: "Tallie, Tallie, wake up. Tallie, will you wake! Bon Dieu! how she sleeps!"
Well, she wrote that she was miserable and that her husband was a fiend and broke her heart and that she hated all her relations and they'd all behaved like serpents to her Mercedes is always running across serpents and how I was the only true friend she had and the only one who understood her, and how she longed for her dear Tallie.
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