"Tch! Tch!" Mrs. Talcott made an indeterminate cluck with her tongue.
"I struggled not to see," said Karen, and her voice took on a sombre energy, "and Tante struggled, too, for me. She, too, saw from the very first what it might mean. She asked me, on the very first day that they met, Mrs. Talcott, when she came back, she asked me to try and make him like her. She was so sweet, so magnanimous," her voice trembled. Oh the deep relief, so deep that it seemed to cut like a knife—of remembering, pressing to her, what Tante had done for her, endured for her! "So sweet, so magnanimous, Mrs. Talcott. She did all that she could—and so did I—to give him time. For it was not that I lacked love for my husband. No. I loved him. More, even more, than I loved Tante. There was perhaps the wrong. I was perhaps cowardly, for his sake. I would not see. And it was all useless. It grew worse and worse. He was not rude to her. It was not that. It was worse. He was so careful—oh I see it now—not to put himself in the wrong. He tried, instead, to put her in the wrong. He misread every word and look. He sneered—oh, I saw it, and shut my eyes—at her little foibles and weaknesses; why should she not have them as well as other people, Mrs. Talcott? And he was blind—blind—blind," Karen's voice trembled more violently, "to all the rest. So that it had to end," she went on in broken sentences. "Tante went because she could bear it no longer. And because she saw that I could bear it no longer. She hoped, by leaving me, to save my happiness. But that could not be. Mrs. Talcott, even then I might have tried to go on living with that chasm—between Tante and my husband—in my life; but I learned the whole truth as even I hadn't seen it; as even she hadn't seen it. Mrs. Forrester came to me, Mrs. Talcott, and told me what Gregory had said to her of Tante. He believes her a malignant woman," said Karen, repeating her former words and rising as she spoke. "And to me he did not deny it. Everything, then, was finished for us. We saw that we did not love each other any longer."
She stood before Mrs. Talcott in the path, her hands hanging at her sides, her eyes fixed on the wall above Mrs. Talcott's head.
Mrs. Talcott did not rise. She sat silent, looking up at Karen, and so for some moments they said nothing, while in the spring sunshine about them the birds whistled and an early white butterfly dipped and fluttered by.
"I feel mighty tired, Karen," Mrs. Talcott then said. Her eyelid with the white mole twitched over her eye, the lines of her large, firm old mouth were relaxed. Karen's eyes went to her and pity filled her.
"It is my miserable story," she said. "I am so sorry."
"Yes, I feel mighty tired," Mrs. Talcott repeated, looking away and out at the sea. "It's discouraging. I thought you were fixed up all safe and happy for life."
"Dear Mrs. Talcott," said Karen, earnestly.
"I don't like to see things that ought to turn out right turning out wrong," Mrs. Talcott continued, "and I've seen a sight too many of them in my life. Things turning out wrong that were meant to go right. Things spoiled. People, nice, good people, like you and Mr. Jardine, all upset and miserable. I've seen worse things, too," Mrs. Talcott slowly rose as she spoke. "Yes, I've seen about as bad things happen as can happen, and it's always been when Mercedes is about."
She stood still beside Karen, her bleak, intense old gaze fixed on the sea.