During this little altercation, Madame von Marwitz, large and white, her profile turned to Betty, sat holding Karen's hand and gazing at her with an almost slumbrous melancholy.
Mrs. Forrester, controlling her displeasure with some difficulty, interposed. "I don't think Lady Jardine really quite understands the position, Karen," she said. "It isn't the normal one, Lady Jardine. Madame von Marwitz stands, really, to Karen in a mother's place."
"Oh, but I can't agree with you, Mrs. Forrester," Betty replied. "Madame von Marwitz doesn't strike me as being in the least like Karen's mother. And she isn't Karen's mother. And Karen's husband, now, should certainly stand first in her life."
A silence followed the sharp report. Mrs. Forrester's and Karen's eyes had turned on the Baroness who sat still, as though her breast had received the shot. With tragic eyes she gazed out above Karen's head; then: "It is true," she said in a low voice, as though communing with herself; "I am indeed alone." She rose. With the slow step of a Niobe she moved down the room and disappeared.
"I do not forgive you for this, Betty," said Karen, following her guardian. Betty, like a naughty school-girl, was left confronting Mrs. Forrester across the tea-table.
"Lady Jardine," said the old lady, fixing her bright eyes on her guest, "I don't think you can have realised what you were saying. Madame von Marwitz's isolation is one of the many tragedies of her life, and you have made it clear to her."
"I'm very sorry," said Betty. "But I feel what Madame von Marwitz is doing to be so mistaken, so wrong."
"These formalities don't obtain nowadays, especially if a wife is so singularly related to a woman like Madame von Marwitz. And Mercedes is quite above all such little consciousnesses, I assure you. She is not aware of sets, in that petty way. It is merely a treat she is giving the child, for she knows how much Karen loves to be with her. And it is only in her train that Karen goes."
"Precisely." Betty had risen and stood smoothing her muff and not feigning to smile. "In her train. I don't think that Gregory's wife should go in anybody's train."
"It was markedly in Mercedes's train that he found her."