"From what I've heard he seemed to me as eminently suitable a husband for Karen as my poor Gregory is unsuitable. What he can have discovered in the girl, I can't imagine. But I remember now how much interested in her he was on that day that he met her here at tea. She is such a dull girl," said Miss Scrotton sadly. "Such a heavy, clumsy person. And Gregory has so much wit and irony. It is very curious." "These things always are. Well, they are married now, and I wish them joy." "No one is at the wedding, I suppose, but old Mrs. Talcott. The next thing we shall hear will be that Sir Alliston has fallen in love with Mrs. Talcott," said Miss Scrotton, indulging her gloomy humour. "Oh, yes; the Jardines went down, and Mrs. Morton;"--Mrs. Morton was a married sister of Gregory's. "Lady Jardine has very much taken to the child you know. They have given her a lovely little tiara." "Dear me," said Miss Scrotton; "it is a case of Cinderella. No; I can't rejoice over it, though, of course I wish them joy; I wired to them this morning and I'm sending them a very handsome paper-cutter of dear father's. Gregory will appreciate that, I think. But no; I shall always be sorry that she didn't marry Franz Lippheim." CHAPTER XVI The Jardines did not come back to London till October. They had spent a month in Scotland and a month in Italy and two weeks in France, returning by way of Paris, where Gregory passed through the ordeal of the Belots. He saw Madame Belot clasp Karen to her breast and the long line of little Belots swarm up to be kissed successively, Monsieur Belot, a short, stout, ruddy man, with outstanding grey hair and a square grey beard, watching the scene benignantly, his palette on his thumb. Madame Belot didn't any longer suggest Chantefoy's picture; she suggested nothing artistic and everything domestic. From a wistful Burne-Jones type with large eyes and a drooping mouth she had relapsed to her plebeian origins and now, fat, kind, cheerful, she was nothing but wife and mother, with a figure like a sack and cheap tortoiseshell combs stuck, apparently at random, in the untidy _bandeaux_ of her hair.