"I didn't turn her out," said Gregory; he walked to the window and stared into the street. "She went because that was the most venomous thing she could do. And I didn't insult her friends."
"You said to her that the man she had thought of as a husband for Karen was not a gentleman. You said that you did not understand how Mercedes could have chosen such a man for her. You said this with the child standing between you. Oh, you cannot deny it, Gregory. I have heard in detail what took place. Mercedes saw that unless she left you Karen's position was an impossible one. It was to save Karen—and your relation to Karen—that she went."
Gregory, still standing at the window, was silent, and then asked: "Have you seen Herr Lippheim?"
"No, Gregory," Mrs. Forrester returned, and now with trenchancy, the concrete case being easier to deal with openly. "No; I have not seen him; but Mercedes spoke to me about him last winter, when she hoped for the match, and told me, moreover, that she was surprised by Karen's refusal, as the child was much attached to him. I have not seen him; but I know the type—and intimately. He is a warm-hearted and intelligent musician."
"Your bootmaker may be warm-hearted and intelligent."
"That is petulant—almost an insolent simile, Gregory. It only reveals, pitifully, your narrowness and prejudice—and, I will add, your ignorance. Herr Lippheim is an artist; a man of character and significance. Many of my dearest friends have been such; hearts of gold; the salt of the world."
"Would you have allowed a daughter of yours, may I ask, to marry one of these hearts of gold?"
"Certainly; most certainly," said Mrs. Forrester, but with a haste and heat somewhat suspicious. "If she loved him."
"If he were personally fit, you mean. Herr Lippheim is undoubtedly warm-hearted and, in his own way, intelligent, but he is as unfit to be Karen's husband as your bootmaker to be yours."
They had come now, on this lower, easier level, to one of the points where temper betrays itself as it cannot do on the heights of contest. Gregory's reiteration of the bootmaker greatly incensed Mrs. Forrester.