Mrs. Talcott when she looked up from this letter saw that Mercedes was absorbed in hers. Her expression had stiffened as she read, and when she had finished the hand holding it dropped to her side. She sat looking down in a dark contemplation.
Mrs. Talcott asked no question. United in the practical exigencies of their search for Karen, united in their indestructible relation of respective dependence and stability, which the last catastrophe had hardly touched—for Mercedes had accepted her betrayal with a singular passivity, as if it had been a force of nature that had overtaken her—there was yet a whole new region of distrust between them. She and Mercedes, as Mrs. Talcott cheerlessly imaged it, were like a constable and his captive adrift, by a curious turn of fortune, on the waters of a sudden inundation. Together they baled out water and worked at the oar, but both were aware that when the present peril was past a sentence had still to be carried out on one of them. Mercedes could not evade her punishment. If Karen were found Gregory Jardine must come to know that her guardian had, literally, driven her from her home. In that case it rested with Gregory's sense of mercy whether Mercedes should be exposed to the world or not. And after reading Gregory's letter Mrs. Talcott reflected that there was not much to hope of mercy from him. So she showed a tactful consideration of her companion's state of nerves by pressing her no further than was necessary.
On this occasion, however, there was no need for pressure; Mercedes, in her dismal plight, turned to her with the latest development of it.
"Ah," she said, while she still continued to gaze down fixedly, "this it is to have true friends. This is human loyalty. It is well."
"What's the matter, Mercedes?" Mrs. Talcott asked, as she was evidently invited to do.
"Read if you will," said Madame von Marwitz. She held out the letter which Mrs. Talcott rose to take.
It was from Mrs. Forrester and was full of sympathy for her afflicted friend, and full of sympathy for foolish, headstrong little Karen. The mingled sympathies rang strangely. She avowed self-reproach. She was afraid that she had precipitated the rupture between Karen and her husband, not quite, perhaps, understanding the facts. She had seen Gregory, she was very sorry for him. She was, apparently, sorry for everyone; except of course, Mr. Drew, the villain of the piece; but of Mr. Drew and of Mercedes's sacred love for him, she made no mention. Mrs. Forrester was fond, but she was wary. She had received, evidently, her dim thrust of disillusion. Mercedes had blamed herself and Mrs. Forrester did not deny that Mercedes must be to blame.
"Yes; she's feeling pretty sick," Mrs. Talcott commented when she had read. "The trouble is that anybody who knows how much Karen loved you knows that she wouldn't have made off like that without you'd treated her ugly. That'll be the trouble with most of your friends, I reckon. Who's your other letter from?"
Madame von Marwitz roused herself from her state of contemplation. She opened the second letter saying, tersely: "Scrotton."
"She ain't likely to take sides with Karen," Mrs. Talcott observed, inserting her hand once more in the stocking she was darning, these homely occupations having for the last few days been brought into the music-room, since Mercedes would not be left alone. "She was always just as jealous of Karen as could be."