Mrs. Talcott listened to these projects, still with her mild illumination, remarking when Karen had done, "I guess not, Karen; I guess I'll stay here. I've been moving round considerable all my life long and now I expect I'll just stay put. There's no one to look after things here but me and they'd get pretty muddled if I was away, I expect. Mitchell isn't a very bright man." "The real difficulty is," said Karen, holding Mrs. Talcott's arm and looking at her with affectionate exasperation, "that she doesn't like to leave Les Solitudes lest she should miss a moment of Tante. Tante sometimes turns up almost at a moment's notice. We shall have to get Tante safely away to Russia, or America again, before we can ask you; isn't that the truth, Mrs. Talcott?" "Well, I don't know. Perhaps there's something in it," Mrs. Talcott admitted. "Mercedes likes to know I'm here seeing to things. She mightn't feel easy in her mind if I was away." "We'll lay it before her, then," said Karen. "I know she will say that you must come." CHAPTER XIV It was not until some three weeks after that Karen paid her visit to London. Tante had not written at once and Gregory had to control his discontent and impatience as best he might. He and Karen wrote to each other every day and he was aware of a fretful anxiety in his letters which contrasted strangely with the serenity of hers. Once more she made him feel that she was the more mature. In his brooding imaginativeness he was like the most youthful of lovers, seeing his treasure menaced on every hand by the hazards of life. He warned Karen against cliff-edges; he warned her, now that motors were every day becoming more common, against their sudden eruption in "cornery" lanes; he begged her repeatedly to keep safe and sound until he could himself take care of her. Karen replied with sober reassurances and promises and showed no corresponding alarms on his behalf. She had, evidently, more confidence in the law of probability. She wired at last to say that she had heard from Tante and would come up next day if Lady Jardine could have her at such short notice. Gregory had made his arrangements with Betty, who showed a most charming sympathy for his situation, and when, at the station, he saw Karen's face smiling at him from a window, when he seized her arm and drew her forth, it was with a sense of relief and triumph as great as though she were restored to him after actual perils. "Darling, it has seemed such ages," he said. He was conscious, delightedly, absorbedly, of everything about her. She wore her little straw hat with the black bow and a long hooded cape of thin grey cloth. In her hand she held a small basket containing her knitting--she was knitting him a pair of golf stockings--and a book.