"I guess if it comes to jealousy you've got enough for two in any situation. It don't do for you to talk to me about jealousy, Mercedes," Mrs. Talcott returned, "I've seen too much of you. You can't persuade me it wasn't your fault, not if you were to talk till the cows come home. I don't deny but what it was pretty hard for you to see that Mr. Jardine didn't admire you. I make allowances for that; but my gracious me," said Mrs. Talcott with melancholy emphasis, "was that any reason for a big middle-aged woman like you behaving like a spiteful child? Was it any reason for your setting to work to spoil Karen's life? No, Mercedes, you've done about as mean a thing as any I've seen you up to and what I want to know now is what you're going to do about it." "Do about it?" Madame von Marwitz wrathfully repeated. "What more can I do? I open my house and my heart to the child. I take her back. I mend the life that he has broken. What more do you expect of me?" "Don't talk that sort of stage talk to me, Mercedes. What I want you to do is to make it possible so as he can get her back." "He is welcome to get her back if he can. I shall not stand in his way. It would be a profound relief to me were he to get her back." "I can see that well enough. But how'll you help standing in his way? The only thing you could do to get out of his way would be to help Karen to be quit of you. Make her see that you're just as bad as he thinks you. I guess if you told her some things about yourself she'd begin to see that her husband wasn't so far wrong about you." "_Par exemple!_" said Madame von Marwitz with a short laugh. She raised herself to give her pillow a blow and turning on her side and contemplating more directly her ancient monitress she said, "I sometimes wonder what I keep you here for." "I do, too, sometimes," said Mrs. Talcott, "and I make it out that you need me." "I make it out," Madame von Marwitz repeated the phrase with a noble dignity of manner, "that I am too kind of heart, too aware of what I owe you in gratitude, to resent, as I have every right to do, the license you allow yourself in speaking to me." "Yes; you'll always get plain speaking from me, Mercedes," Mrs. Talcott remarked, "just as long as you have anything to do with me." "Indeed I shall. I am but too well aware of the fact," said Madame von Marwitz, "and I only tolerate it because of our life-long tie." "You'll go on tolerating it, I guess, Mercedes. You'd feel mighty queer, I expect, if the one person in the world who knew you through and through and had stood by you through everything wasn't there to fall back on."