by the doubtful honour of being one of Sacha Adelschein’s intimates. Undine guessed that the Princess had expected to find her more amusing, “queerer,” more startling in speech and conduct. Though by instinct she was none of these things, she was eager to go as far as was expected; but she felt that her audacities were on lines too normal to be interesting, and that the Princess thought her rather school-girlish and old-fashioned. Still, they had in common their youth, their boredom, their high spirits and their hunger for amusement; and Undine was making the most of these ties when one day, coming back from a trip to Monte-Carlo with the Princess, she was brought up short by the sight of a lady—evidently a new arrival—who was seated in an attitude of respectful intimacy beside the old Duchess’s chair. Undine, advancing unheard over the fine gravel of the garden path, recognized at a glance the Marquise de Trezac’s drooping nose and disdainful back, and at the same moment heard her say: “—And her husband?”
“Her husband? But she’s an American—she’s divorced,” the Duchess replied, as if she were merely stating the same fact in two different ways; and Undine stopped short with a pang of apprehension.
The Princess came up behind her. “Who’s the solemn person with Mamma? Ah, that old bore of a Trezac!” She dropped her long eyeglass with a laugh. “Well, she’ll be useful—she’ll stick to Mamma like a leech and we shall get away oftener. Come, let’s go and be charming to her.”
She approached Madame de Trezac effusively, and after an interchange of exclamations Undine heard her say “You know my friend Mrs. Marvell? No? How odd! Where do you manage to hide yourself, chere Madame? Undine, here’s a compatriot who hasn’t the pleasure—”
“I’m such a hermit, dear Mrs. Marvell—the Princess shows me what I miss,” the Marquise de Trezac murmured, rising to give her hand to Undine, and speaking in a voice so different from that of the supercilious Miss Wincher that only her facial angle and the droop of her nose linked her to the hated vision of Potash Springs.
Undine felt herself dancing on a flood-tide of security. For the first time the memory of Potash Springs became a thing to smile at, and with the Princess’s arm through hers she shone back triumphantly on Madame de Trezac, who seemed to have grown suddenly obsequious and insignificant, as though the waving of the Princess’s wand had stripped her of all her false advantages.
But upstairs, in her own room. Undine’s courage fell. Madame de Trezac had been civil, effusive even, because for the moment she had been taken off her guard by finding Mrs. Marvell on terms of intimacy with the Princess Estradina and her mother. But the force of facts would reassert itself. Far from continuing to see Undine through her French friends’ eyes she would probably invite them to view her compatriot through the searching lens of her own ampler information. “The old hypocrite—she’ll tell them everything,” Undine murmured, wincing at the recollection of the dentist’s assistant from Deposit, and staring miserably at her reflection in the dressing-table mirror. Of what use were youth and grace and good looks, if one drop of poison distilled from the envy of a narrow-minded woman was enough to paralyze them? Of course Madame de Trezac knew and remembered, and, secure in her own impregnable position, would never rest till she had driven out the intruder.
XXVIII
“What do you say to Nice tomorrow, dearest?” the Princess suggested a few evenings later as she followed Undine upstairs after a languid evening at bridge with the Duchess and Madame de Trezac.
Halfway down the passage she stopped to open a door and, putting her finger to her lip, signed to Undine to enter. In the taper-lit dimness stood two small white beds, each surmounted by a crucifix and a palm branch, and each containing a small brown sleeping child with a mop of hair and a curiously finished little face. As the Princess stood gazing on their innocent slumbers she seemed for a moment like a third little girl scarcely bigger and browner than the others; and the smile with which she watched them was as clear as theirs. “Ah, si seulement je pouvais choisir leurs amants!” she sighed as she turned away.
“—Nice tomorrow,” she repeated, as she and Undine walked on to their rooms with linked arms. “We may as well make hay while the Trezac shines. She bores Mamma frightfully, but Mamma won’t admit it because they belong to the same oeuvres. Shall it be the eleven train, dear? We can lunch at the Royal and look in the shops—we may meet somebody amusing. Anyhow, it’s better than staying here!”
Undine was sure the trip to Nice would be delightful. Their previous expeditions had shown her the Princess’s faculty for organizing such adventures. At Monte-Carlo, a few days before, they had run across two or three amusing but unassorted people, and the Princess, having fused them in a jolly lunch, had followed it up by a bout at baccarat, and, finally hunting down an eminent composer who had just arrived to rehearse a new production, had insisted on his asking the party to tea, and treating them to fragments of his opera.
A few days earlier, Undine’s hope of renewing such pleasures would have been clouded by the dread of leaving Madame de Trezac alone with the Duchess. But she had no longer any fear of Madame de Trezac. She had discovered that her old rival of Potash Springs was in actual dread of her disfavour, and nervously anxious to conciliate her, and the discovery gave her such a sense of the heights she had scaled, and the security of her footing, that all her troubled past began to seem like the result of some providential “design,” and vague impulses of piety stirred in her as she and the Princess whirled toward Nice through the blue and gold glitter of the morning.
They wandered about the lively streets, they gazed into the beguiling shops, the Princess tried on hats and Undine bought them, and they lunched at the Royal on all sorts of succulent dishes prepared under the headwaiter’s special supervision. But as they were savouring their “double” coffee and liqueurs, and Undine was wondering what her companion would devise for the afternoon, the Princess clapped her hands together and cried out: “Dearest, I’d forgotten! I must desert you.”
She explained that she’d promised the Duchess to look up a friend who was ill—a poor wretch who’d been sent to Cimiez for her lungs—and that she must rush off at once, and would be back as soon as possible—well, if not in an hour, then in two at latest. She was full of compunction, but she knew Undine would forgive her, and find something amusing to fill up the time: she advised her to go back and buy the black hat with the osprey, and try on the crepe de Chine they’d thought so smart: for any one as good-looking as herself the woman would probably alter it for nothing; and they could meet again at the Palace Tea-Rooms at four. She whirled away in a cloud of explanations, and Undine, left alone, sat down on the Promenade des Anglais. She did not believe a word the Princess had said. She had seen in a flash why she was being left, and why the plan had not been divulged to her beforehand; and she quivered with resentment and humiliation. “That’s what she’s wanted me for…that’s why she made up to me. She’s trying it to-day, and after this it’ll happen regularly…she’ll drag me over here every day or two…at least she thinks she will!”
A sincere disgust was Undine’s uppermost sensation. She was as much ashamed as Mrs. Spragg might have been at finding herself used to screen a clandestine adventure.
“I’ll let her see… I’ll make her understand,” she repeated angrily; and for a moment she was half-disposed to drive to the station and take the first train back. But the sense of her precarious situation withheld her; and presently, with bitterness in her heart, she got up and began to stroll toward the shops.
To show that she was not a dupe, she arrived at the designated meeting-place nearly an hour later than the time appointed; but when she entered the Tea-Rooms the Princess was nowhere to be seen. The rooms were crowded, and Undine was guided toward a small inner apartment where isolated couples were absorbing refreshments in an atmosphere of intimacy that made it seem incongruous to be alone. She glanced about for a face she knew, but none was visible, and she was just giving up the search
