Gregory, with all his acuteness, did not gauge the astonishment with which Karen came to realize these standards of his world. Her cheerful evenness of demeanour was a cloak, sometimes for indignation and sometimes for mirth. She could only face the fact that this world must, in a sense, be hers, by relegating it and all that it meant to the merest background in their lives. Her real life consisted in Gregory; in Tante. All that she had to do with these people--oh, so nice and kind they were, she saw that well, but oh so stupid, most of them, so inconceivably blind to everything of value in life--all that she had to do was, from time to time, to open their box, their well-padded, well-provendered box, and look at them pleasantly. She felt sure that for Gregory's sake, if not for theirs, she should always be able to look pleasantly; unless--she had been afraid of this sometimes--they should say or do things that in their blindness struck at Tante and at the realities that Tante stood for. But all had gone so well, so Karen believed, that she felt no misgivings when Tante expressed a wish to look into the box with her and said, "You must give a little dinner-party for me, my Karen, so that I may see your new _milieu_." Gregory controlled a dry little grimace when Karen reported this speech to him. He couldn't but suspect Tante's motives in wanting them to give a little dinner-party for her. But he feigned the most genial interest in the plan and agreed with Karen that they must ask their very nicest to meet Tante. Betty had helped Karen with all her dinners; she had seen as yet very little of the great woman, and entered fully into Karen's eagerness that everything should be very nice. "Gregory will take her in," said Betty; "and we'll put Bertram Fraser on her other side. He's always delightful. And we'll have the Canning-Thompsons and the Overtons and the Byngs; the Byngs are so decorative!" Constance Armytage was now Mrs. Byng. "And my dear old General," said Karen, sitting at her desk with a paper on her knee and an obedient pencil in her hand; "I forget his name, but we met him at the dinner that you gave after we married; you know, Betty, with the thin russet face and the little blue eyes. May he take me in?" "General Montgomery. Yes; that is a good idea; glorious old man. Though Lady Montgomery is rather a stodge," said Betty; "but Oliver can have her." "I remember, a sleek, small head--like a turtle--with salmon-pink feathers on it. Poor Oliver. Will he mind?" "Not a bit. He never minds anything but the dinner; and with Mrs. Barker we can trust to that." "Tante often likes soldiers," said Karen, pleased with her good idea. "Our flags, she says, they are, and that the world would be drab-coloured without them."