"Is it so? Perhaps you say the truth, my child. Hurts are not new to me. No, my Karen, no. It is nothing for us to speak of. I understand. But your husband, Karen, he must have found it thoughtless in me, indelicate, to force myself in when he had hoped so strongly for another guest."
A slow flush mounted to Karen's cheek. She kept silence for a moment, then in a careful voice she said: "No, Tante; I do not believe that."
"No?" said Madame von Marwitz. "No, my Karen?"
"He knew, on the contrary, that I hoped to have you soon—at any time that you could come," said Karen, in slightly trembling tones.
Madame von Marwitz nodded. "He knew that, as you tell me; and, knowing it, he asked Tallie; hoping that with her installed—for a long visit—my stay might be prevented. Do not let us hide from each other, my Karen. We have hidden too long and it is the beginning of the end if we may not say to each other what we see."
Sitting with downcast eyes, Karen was silent, struggling perhaps with new realisations.
Madame von Marwitz bent to kiss her forehead and then, resuming the tender stroking of her hair, she went on: "Your husband dislikes me. Let us look the ugly thing full in the face. You know it, and I know it, and—parbleu!—he knows it well. There; the truth is out. Ah, the brave little heart; it sought to hide its sorrow from me. But Tante is not so dull a person. The loneliness of heart must cease for you. And the sorrow, too, may pass away. Be patient, Karen. You will see. He may come to feel more kindly towards the woman who so loves his wife. Strange, is it not, and a chastisement for my egotism, if I have still any of that frothy element lingering in my nature, that I should find, suddenly, at the end of my life—so near me, bound to me by such ties—one who is unwilling to trust me, oh, for the least little bit; so unwilling to accept me at merely my face value. Most people," she added, "have loved me easily."
Karen sat on in silence. Her guardian knew this apathetic silence, and that it was symptomatic in her of deep emotion. And, the contagion of the suffering beside her gaining upon her, her own fictitious calm wavered. She bent again to look into the girl's averted face. "Karen, chérie," she said, and now with a quicker utterance; "it is not worse than I yet realise? You do not hide something that I have not yet seen. It is dislike; I accept it. It is aversion, even. But his love for you; that is strong, sincere? He will not make it too difficult for me? I am not wrong in coming here to be with my child?"
Karen at length turned her eyes on her guardian with a heavy look. "What would you find too difficult?" she asked.
Madame von Marwitz hesitated slightly, taken aback. But she grasped in an instant her advantage. "That by being here I should feel that I came between you and your husband. That by being here I made it more difficult for you."