As Undine re-read her mother’s pages, she felt an unusual tightness in her throat and two tears rose to her eyes. It was dreadful that her little boy should be growing up far away from her, perhaps dressed in clothes she would have hated; and wicked and unnatural that when he saw her picture he should have to be told who she was. “If I could only meet some good man who would give me a home and be a father to him,” she thought—and the tears overflowed and ran down.
Even as they fell, the door was thrown open to admit Raymond de Chelles, and the consciousness of the moisture still glistening on her cheeks perhaps strengthened her resolve to resist him, and thus made her more imperiously to be desired. Certain it is that on that day her suitor first alluded to a possibility which Madame de Trezac had prudently refrained from suggesting, there fell upon Undine’s attentive ears the magic phrase “annulment of marriage.”
Her alert intelligence immediately set to work in this new direction; but almost at the same moment she became aware of a subtle change of tone in the Princess and her mother, a change reflected in the corresponding decline of Madame de Trezac’s cordiality. Undine, since her arrival in Paris, had necessarily been less in the Princess’s company, but when they met she had found her as friendly as ever. It was manifestly not a failing of the Princess’s to forget past favours, and though increasingly absorbed by the demands of town life she treated her new friend with the same affectionate frankness, and Undine was given frequent opportunities to enlarge her Parisian acquaintance, not only in the Princess’s intimate circle but in the majestic drawingrooms of the Hotel de Dordogne. Now, however, there was a perceptible decline in these signs of hospitality, and Undine, on calling one day on the Duchess, noticed that her appearance sent a visible flutter of discomfort through the circle about her hostess’s chair. Two or three of the ladies present looked away from the newcomer and at each other, and several of them seemed spontaneously to encircle without approaching her, while another—grey-haired, elderly and slightly frightened—with an “Adieu, ma bonne tante” to the Duchess, was hastily aided in her retreat down the long line of old gilded rooms.
The incident was too mute and rapid to have been noticeable had it not been followed by the Duchess’s resuming her conversation with the ladies nearest her as though Undine had just gone out of the room instead of entering it. The sense of having been thus rendered invisible filled Undine with a vehement desire to make herself seen, and an equally strong sense that all attempts to do so would be vain; and when, a few minutes later, she issued from the portals of the Hotel de Dordogne it was with the fixed resolve not to enter them again till she had had an explanation with the Princess.
She was spared the trouble of seeking one by the arrival, early the next morning, of Madame de Trezac, who, entering almost with the breakfast tray, mysteriously asked to be allowed to communicate something of importance.
“You’ll understand, I know, the Princess’s not coming herself—” Madame de Trezac began, sitting up very straight on the edge of the armchair over which Undine’s lace dressinggown hung.
“If there’s anything she wants to say to me, I don’t,” Undine answered, leaning back among her rosy pillows, and reflecting compassionately that the face opposite her was just the colour of the café au lait she was pouring out.
“There are things that are…that might seem too pointed…if one said them one’s self,” Madame de Trezac continued. “Our dear Lili’s so good-natured… she so hates to do anything unfriendly; but she naturally thinks first of her mother…”
“Her mother? What’s the matter with her mother?”
“I told her I knew you didn’t understand. I was sure you’d take it in good part…”
Undine raised herself on her elbow. “What did Lili tell you to tell me?”
“Oh, not to TELL you…simply to ask if, just for the present, you’d mind avoiding the Duchess’s Thursdays …calling on any other day, that is.”
“Any other day? She’s not at home on any other. Do you mean she doesn’t want me to call?”
“Well—not while the Marquise de Chelles is in Paris. She’s the Duchess’s favourite niece—and of course they all hang together. That kind of family feeling is something you naturally don’t—”
Undine had a sudden glimpse of hidden intricacies.
“That was Raymond de Chelles’ mother I saw there yesterday? The one they hurried out when I came in?”
“It seems she was very much upset. She somehow heard your name.”
“Why shouldn’t she have heard my name? And why in the world should it upset her?”
Madame de Trezac heaved a hesitating sigh. “Isn’t it better to be frank? She thinks she has reason to feel badly—they all do.”
“To feel badly? Because her son wants to marry me?”
“Of course they know that’s impossible.” Madame de Trezac smiled compassionately. “But they’re afraid of your spoiling his other chances.”
Undine paused a moment before answering, “It won’t be impossible when my marriage is annulled,” she said.
The effect of this statement was less electrifying than she had hoped. Her visitor simply broke into a laugh. “My dear child! Your marriage annulled? Who can have put such a mad idea into your head?”
Undine’s gaze followed the pattern she was tracing with a lustrous nail on her embroidered bedspread. “Raymond himself,” she let fall.
This time there was no mistaking the effect she produced. Madame de Trezac, with a murmured “Oh,” sat gazing before her as if she had lost the thread of her argument; and it was only after a considerable interval that she recovered it sufficiently to exclaim: “They’ll never hear of it—absolutely never!”
“But they can’t prevent it, can they?”
“They can prevent its being of any use to you.”
“I see,” Undine pensively assented.
She knew the tone she had taken was virtually a declaration of war; but she was in a mood when the act of defiance, apart from its strategic value, was a satisfaction in itself. Moreover, if she could not gain her end without a fight it was better that the battle should be engaged while Raymond’s ardour was at its height. To provoke immediate hostilities she sent for him the same afternoon, and related, quietly and without comment, the incident of her visit to the Duchess, and the mission with which Madame de Trezac had been charged. In the circumstances, she went on to explain, it was manifestly impossible that she should continue to receive his visits; and she met his wrathful comments on his relatives by the gently but firmly expressed resolve not to be the cause of any disagreement between himself and his family.
XXX
A few days after her decisive conversation with Raymond de Chelles, Undine, emerging from the doors of the Nouveau Luxe, where she had been to call on the newly-arrived Mrs. Homer Branney, once more found herself face to face with Elmer Moffatt.
This time there was no mistaking his eagerness to be recognized. He stopped short as they met, and she read such pleasure in his eyes that she too stopped, holding out her hand.
“I’m glad you’re going to speak to me,” she said, and Moffatt reddened at the allusion.
“Well, I very nearly didn’t. I didn’t know you. You look about as old as you did when I first landed at Apex—remember?”
He turned back and began to walk at her side in the direction of the Champs Elysees.
“Say—this