"But I shall see Tante before she goes?" It was the formless, featureless fear that came closer.
"My, yes! You'll see her all right," said Mrs. Talcott. "She was asking after you the first thing and hoped you'd stay in bed till lunch. Now you eat your breakfast right away like a good girl."
Karen tried to eat her breakfast like a good girl and the sound of the Wohltemperirtes Clavier seemed again to encircle and sustain her.
"How'd you sleep, honey?" Mrs. Talcott inquired. The term hardly expressed endearment, yet it was such an unusual one from Mrs. Talcott that Karen could only surmise that her tears had touched the old woman.
"Very, very well," she said.
"How'd you like me to bring up some mending I've got to do and sit by you till Mercedes comes?" Mrs. Talcott pursued.
"Oh, please do, Mrs. Talcott," said Karen. She felt that she would like to have Mrs. Talcott there with her very much. She would probably cry unless Mrs. Talcott stayed with her, and she did not want Tante to find her crying.
So Mrs. Talcott brought her basket of mending and sat by the window, sewing in silence for the most part, but exchanging with Karen now and then a quiet remark about the state of the garden and how the plants were doing.
At eleven the sound of the piano ceased and soon after the stately tread of Madame von Marwitz was heard outside. Mrs. Talcott, saying that she would come back later on, gathered up her mending as she appeared. She was dressed for motoring, with a long white cloak lined with white fur and her head bound in nun-like fashion with a white coif and veil. Beautiful she looked, and sad, and gentle; a succouring Madonna; and Karen's heart rose up to her. It clung to her and prayed; and the realisation of her own need, her own dependence, was a new thing. She had never before felt dependence on Tante as anything but proud and glad. To pray to her now that she should never belie her loveliness, to cling to that faith in her without which all her life would be a thing distorted and unrecognisable, was not pride or gladness and seemed to be the other side of fear. Yet so gentle were the eyes, so tender the smile and the firm clasp of the hands taking hers, while Tante murmured, stooping to kiss her: "Good morning to my child," that the prayer seemed answered, the faith approved.
If Madame von Marwitz had been taken by surprise the night before, if she had had to give herself time to think, she had now, it was evident, done her thinking. The result was this warmly cherishing tenderness.