"I don't like her. I own to it," Gregory replied with a certain frosty relief. It was like taking off damp, threadbare garments that had chilled one for a long time and facing the winter wind, naked, but invigorated. "I dislike her very much." "May I ask why?" Mrs. Forrester inquired, with careful courtesy. "I distrust her," said Gregory. "I think she's dangerous, and tyrannous, and unscrupulous. I think that she's devoured by egotism. I'm sorry. But if you ask me why, I can only tell you." Mrs. Forrester sat silent for a moment, and then, the flush on her delicate old cheek deepening, she murmured: "It is worse, far worse, than Mercedes told me. Even Mercedes didn't suspect this. Gregory,--I must ask you another question: Do you really imagine that you and your cruel thoughts of her would be of the slightest consequence to Mercedes Okraska, if you had not married the child for whose happiness she holds herself responsible?" "Of course not. She wouldn't give me another thought, if I weren't there, in her path; I am in her path, and she feels that I don't like her, and she hasn't been able to let me alone." "She has not let you alone because she hoped to make your marriage secure in the only way in which security was possible for you and Karen. What happiness could she see for Karen's future if she were to have cut herself apart from her life; dropped you, and Karen with you? That, doubtless, would have been the easy thing to do. There is indeed no reason why women like Mercedes Okraska, women with the world at their feet, should trouble to think of the young men they may chance to meet, whose exacting moral sense they don't satisfy. I am glad you see that," said Mrs. Forrester, tapping her table. "It would have been far kinder to have dropped Karen than deliberately to set to work, as she has done, to ruin her happiness. She hasn't been able to keep her hands off it. She couldn't stand it--a happiness she hadn't given; a happiness for which gratitude wasn't due to her."