"Yes; we talked of a good many things," said Karen. "But I know about so few of their things and they about so few of mine. Miss Lavington was very much surprised to think that I had never been to a fox-hunt; and I," Karen smiled, "was very much surprised to think that they had never heard Tante play."
"They hardly ever get up to town, you see," said Gregory. "But surely they knew about her?"
"Not much," said Karen. "Mrs. Lavington asked me about her—for something pleasant to say—and they were such strange questions; as though one should be asked whether Mr. Arthur Balfour were a Russian nihilist or Metchnikoff an Italian poet." Karen spoke quite without grievance or irony.
"And after your Sargent," said Gregory, "you must have been pained by that portrait of Mrs. Haverfield in the drawing-room."
"Mrs. Lavington pointed it out to me specially," said Karen, laughing, "and told me that it had been in the Academy. What a sad thing; with all those eyelashes! And yet opposite to it hung the beautiful Gainsborough of a great-grandmother. Mrs. Lavington saw no difference, I think."
"They haven't been trained to see differences," said Gregory, and he summed up the Lavingtons in the aphorism to himself as well as to Karen; "only to accept samenesses." He hoped indeed, by sacrificing the æsthetic quality of the Lavingtons, to win some approbation of their virtues; but Karen, though not inclined to proffer unasked criticism, found, evidently, no occasion for commendation. Later on, when they were back at Les Solitudes and walking in the garden, she returned to the subject of his friends and said: "I was a little disturbed about Mrs. Talcott; did you notice? no one talked to her at all, hardly. It was as if they thought her my dame de compagnie. She isn't my dame de compagnie; and if she were, I think that she should have been talked to."
Gregory had observed this fact and had hoped that it might have escaped Karen's notice. To the Lavingtons Mrs. Talcott's platter had been unrecognizable and they had tended to let its contents alone.
"It's as I said, you know," he put forward a mitigation; "they've not been trained to see differences; she is very different, isn't she?"
"Well, but so am I," said Karen, "and they talked to me. I don't mean to complain of your friends; that would be very rude when they were so nice and kind; and, besides, are your friends. But people's thoughtlessness displeases me, not that I am not often very thoughtless myself."
Gregory was anxious to exonerate himself. "I hope she didn't feel left out;" he said. "I did notice that she wasn't talking. I found her in the garden, alone—she seemed to be enjoying that, too—and she and I went about for quite a long time together."