"But cannot Gregory come, too, Tante?" Karen questioned, her pleasure dashed.
"These friends of mine, my Karen," said Madame von Marwitz, "have heard of you as mine only. It is as my child that you will come with me; just as it is as your husband's wife that you see his friends. That is quite clear, quite happy, quite understood."
Karen's eyes now turned on Betty. They did not seek counsel, they asked no question of Betty; but they gave her, in their slight bewilderment, her opportunity.
"But Karen, I think you are right," so she took up the gage that Madame von Marwitz had flung. "I don't think that you must accept this invitation without, at least, consulting Gregory."
Madame von Marwitz did not look at her. She continued to gaze as serenely at Karen as though Betty were a dog that had barked irrelevantly from the hearth-rug. But Karen fixed widened eyes upon her.
"I do not need to consult Gregory, Betty," she said. "We have, I know, no engagements for this Saturday to Monday, and he will be delighted for me that I am to go with Tante."
"That may be, my dear," Betty returned with a manner as imperturbable as Madame von Marwitz's; "but I think that you should give him an opportunity of saying so. He may not care for his wife to go to strangers without him."
"They are not strangers. They are friends of Tante's."
"Gregory may not care for you to make—as Madame von Marwitz suggests—a different set of friends from his own."
"If they become my friends they will become his," said Karen.