"It isn't a particularly lively time, it seems to me, for either of you," said Gregory. It was his instinct to blame Madame von Marwitz for the featureless lives led by her dependents, though he could but own that it might, perhaps, be difficult to fit them into the vagabondage of a great pianist's existence.
"Well, it's good enough for me," said Mrs. Talcott. "I'm very contented if it comes to that; and so is Karen. She's known so much that's worse, the same as I have. But she's known what's better, too; she was a pretty big girl when her Poppa died and she was a companion to him and I reckon that without figuring it up much to herself she's lonesome a good deal."
Gregory for a moment was silent. Then he found it quite natural to say to Mrs. Talcott: "What I hope is that she will marry me."
"I hope so, too," said Mrs. Talcott with no alteration of tone. "I hoped so the moment I set eyes on you. I saw that you were a good young man and that you'd make her a good kind husband."
"Thanks, very much," said Gregory, smiling yet deeply touched. "I hope I may be. I intend to be if she will have me."
"The child is mighty fond of you," said Mrs. Talcott. "And it's not as if she took easy to people. She don't. She's never seemed to need folks. But I can see that she's mighty fond of you, and what I want to say is, even if it don't seem to work out like you want it to right away, you hang on, Mr. Jardine; that's my advice; an old woman like me understands young girls better than they understand themselves. Karen is so wrapped up in Mercedes and thinks such a sight of her that perhaps she'll feel she don't want to leave her and that sort of thing; but just you hang on."
"I intend to," said Gregory. "I can't say how much I thank you for being on my side."
"Yes; I'm on your side, and I'm on Karen's side; and I want to see this thing put through," said Mrs. Talcott.
Something seemed to hover between them now, a fourth figure that must be added to the trio they made. He wondered, if he did hang on successfully and if it did work out as he intended that it should, how that fourth figure would work in. He couldn't see a shared life with Karen from which it could be eliminated, nor did he, of course, wish to see it eliminated; but he did not see himself, either, as forming one of a band of satellites, and the main fact about the fourth figure seemed to be that any relation to it involved one, apparently, in discipleship. There seemed even some disloyalty to Mrs. Talcott in accepting her sympathy while anxieties and repudiations such as these were passing through his mind; for she, no doubt, saw in Karen's relation to Madame von Marwitz the chief asset with which she could present a husband; and he expected Mrs. Talcott, now, to make some reference to this asset; but none came; and if she expected from him some recognition of it, no expectancy was visible in the old blue eyes fixed on his face. A silence fell between them, and as it grew longer it grew the more consoling. Into their compact of understanding she let him see, he could almost fancy, that the question of Madame von Marwitz was not to enter.
Karen, when she appeared, was looking preoccupied, and after shaking his hand and giving him, for a moment, the sweet, grave smile with which they had parted, she glanced at the writing-table. "You are writing to Tante, Mrs. Talcott?" she said. "You heard from her this morning?"