"Well, as to Mr. Jardine, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott, "there was no need of saying anything, was there, if I turned out right in what I told him I suspected. He sees I'm right. He'd been fed up, along with the rest of them, on lies, and Karen can help him out with the details if he wants to ask for them. As for the old lady, I gave her the truth of the story about Karen running away. I made her see, and see straight, that your one idea was to keep Karen's husband from getting her back because you knew that if he did the truth about you would come out. I let you down as easy as I could and put it that you weren't responsible exactly for the things you said when you went off your head in a rage and that you were awful sorry when you found Karen had taken you at your word and made off. But that old lady feels mighty sick, Mercedes, and I allow she'll feel sicker when she's seen Mr. Jardine. As for Miss Scrotton, I saw her, too, and she's come out strong; you've got a friend there, Mercedes, sure; she won't believe anything against her beloved Mercedes," a dry smile touched Mrs. Talcott's grave face as she echoed Miss Scrotton's phraseology, "until she hears from her own lips what she has to say in explanation of the story. You'll be able to fix her up all right, Mercedes, and most of the others, too, I expect. I'd advise you to lie low for a while and let it blow over. People are mighty glad to be given the chance for forgetting things against anyone like you. It'll simmer down and work out, I expect, to a bad quarrel you had with Karen that's parted you. And as for the outside world, why it won't mind a mite what you do. Why you can murder your grandmother and eat her, I expect, and the world'll manage to overlook it, if you're a genius." "I thank you," said Madame von Marwitz, her hand clasping and unclasping the door-knob. "I thank you indeed for your reassurance. I have murdered and eaten my grandmother, but I am to escape hanging because I am a genius. That is a most gratifying piece of information. You, personally, I infer, consider that the penalty should be paid, however gifted the criminal."