witz said:

"And now, my Karen, I have a little plan to tell you of; a little treat
that I have arranged for you. We are to go together, on this next
Saturday, to stay at Thole Castle with my friends the Duke and Duchess
of Bannister. I have told them that I wish to bring my child."

"But how delightful, Tante. It is to be in the country? We shall be
there, you and I and Gregory, till Monday?"

"I thought that I should please you. Yes; till Monday. And in beautiful
country. But it is to be our own small treat; yours and mine. Your
husband will lend you to me for those two days." Holding the girl's hand
Madame von Marwitz smiled indulgently at her, with eyes only for her.
Betty, however, was listening.

"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.

During this little altercation, Madame von Marwitz, large and white, her
profile turned to Betty, sat holding Karen's hand and gazing at her with
an almost slumbrous melancholy.

Mrs. Forrester, controlling her di