about her. As they spread and sparkled under Mrs. Heeny’s touch, Mrs. Spragg leaned back, drinking in through half-closed lids her daughter’s loveliness. Some new quality seemed added to Undine’s beauty: it had a milder bloom, a kind of melting grace, which might have been lent to it by the moisture in her mother’s eyes.
“So you’re to see the old gentleman for the first time at this dinner?” Mrs. Heeny pursued, sweeping the live strands up into a loosely woven crown.
“Yes. I’m frightened to death!” Undine, laughing confidently, took up a hand-glass and scrutinized the small brown mole above the curve of her upper lip.
“I guess she’ll know how to talk to him,” Mrs. Spragg averred with a kind of quavering triumph.
“She’ll know how to LOOK at him, anyhow,” said Mrs. Heeny; and Undine smiled at her own image.
“I hope he won’t think I’m too awful!”
Mrs. Heeny laughed. “Did you read the description of yourself in the Radiator this morning? I wish’t I’d ‘a had time to cut it out. I guess I’ll have to start a separate bag for YOUR clippings soon.”
Undine stretched her arms luxuriously above her head and gazed through lowered lids at the foreshortened reflection of her face.
“Mercy! Don’t jerk about like that. Am I to put in this rose?—There—you ARE lovely!” Mrs. Heeny sighed, as the pink petals sank into the hair above the girl’s forehead. Undine pushed her chair back, and sat supporting her chin on her clasped hands while she studied the result of Mrs. Heeny’s manipulations.
“Yes—that’s the way Mrs. Peter Van Degen’s flower was put in the other night; only hers was a camellia.—Do you think I’d look better with a camellia?”
“I guess if Mrs. Van Degen looked like a rose she’d ‘a worn a rose,” Mrs. Heeny rejoined poetically. “Sit still a minute longer,” she added. “Your hair’s so heavy I’d feel easier if I was to put in another pin.”
Undine remained motionless, and the manicure, suddenly laying both hands on the girl’s shoulders, and bending over to peer at her reflection, said playfully: “Ever been engaged before, Undine?”
A blush rose to the face in the mirror, spreading from chin to brow, and running rosily over the white shoulders from which their covering had slipped down.
“My! If he could see you now!” Mrs. Heeny jested.
Mrs. Spragg, rising noiselessly, glided across the room and became lost in a minute examination of the dress laid out on the bed.
With a supple twist Undine slipped from Mrs. Heeny’s hold.
“Engaged? Mercy, yes! Didn’t you know? To the Prince of Wales. I broke it off because I wouldn’t live in the Tower.”
Mrs. Spragg, lifting the dress cautiously over her arm, advanced with a reassured smile.
“I s’pose Undie’ll go to Europe now,” she said to Mrs. Heeny.
“I guess Undie WILL!” the young lady herself declared. “We’re going to sail right afterward.—Here, mother, do be careful of my hair!” She ducked gracefully to slip into the lacy fabric which her mother held above her head. As she rose Venus-like above its folds there was a tap on the door, immediately followed by its tentative opening.
“Mabel!” Undine muttered, her brows lowering like her father’s; and Mrs. Spragg, wheeling about to screen her daughter, addressed herself protestingly to the half-open door.
“Who’s there? Oh, that YOU, Mrs. Lipscomb? Well, I don’t know as you CAN—Undie isn’t half dressed yet—”
“Just like her—always pushing in!” Undine murmured as she slipped her arms into their transparent sleeves.
“Oh, that don’t matter—I’ll help dress her!” Mrs. Lipscomb’s large blond person surged across the threshold. “Seems to me I ought to lend a hand tonight, considering I was the one that introduced them!”
Undine forced a smile, but Mrs. Spragg, her soft wrinkles deepening with resentment, muttered to Mrs. Heeny, as she bent down to shake out the girl’s train: “I guess my daughter’s only got to show herself—”
The first meeting with old Mr. Dagonet was less formidable than Undine had expected. She had been once before to the house in Washington Square, when, with her mother, she had returned Mrs. Marvell’s ceremonial visit; but on that occasion Ralph’s grandfather had not been present. All the rites connected with her engagement were new and mysterious to Undine, and none more so than the unaccountable necessity of “dragging”—as she phrased it—Mrs. Spragg into the affair. It was an accepted article of the Apex creed that parental detachment should be completest at the moment when the filial fate was decided; and to find that New York reversed this rule was as puzzling to Undine as to her mother. Mrs. Spragg was so unprepared for the part she was to play that on the occasion of her visit to Mrs. Marvell her helplessness had infected Undine, and their half-hour in the sober faded drawingroom remained among the girl’s most unsatisfactory memories.
She reentered it alone with more assurance. Her confidence in her beauty had hitherto carried her through every ordeal; and it was fortified now by the feeling of power that came with the sense of being loved. If they would only leave her mother out she was sure, in her own phrase, of being able to “run the thing”; and Mrs. Spragg had providentially been left out of the Dagonet dinner.
It was to consist, it appeared, only of the small family group Undine had already met; and, seated at old Mr. Dagonet’s right, in the high dark diningroom with mahogany doors and dim portraits of “Signers” and their females, she felt a conscious joy in her ascendancy. Old Mr. Dagonet—small, frail and softly sardonic—appeared to fall at once under her spell. If she felt, beneath his amenity, a kind of delicate dangerousness, like that of some fine surgical instrument, she ignored it as unimportant; for she had as yet no clear perception of forces that did not directly affect her.
Mrs. Marvell, low-voiced, faded, yet impressive, was less responsive to her arts, and Undine divined in her the head of the opposition to Ralph’s marriage. Mrs. Heeny had reported that Mrs. Marvell had other views for her son; and this was confirmed by such echoes of the short sharp struggle as reached the throbbing listeners at the Stentorian. But the conflict over, the air had immediately cleared, showing the enemy in the act of unconditional surrender. It surprised Undine that there had been no reprisals, no return on the points conceded. That was not her idea of warfare, and she could ascribe the completeness of the victory only to the effect of her charms.
Mrs. Marvell’s manner did not express entire subjugation; yet she seemed anxious to dispel any doubts of her good faith, and if she left the burden of the talk to her lively daughter it might have been because she felt more capable of showing indulgence by her silence than in her speech.
As for Mrs. Fairford, she had never seemed more brilliantly bent on fusing the various elements under her hand. Undine had already discovered that she adored her brother, and had guessed that this would make her either a strong ally or a determined enemy. The latter alternative, however, did not alarm the girl. She thought Mrs. Fairford “bright,” and wanted to be liked by her; and she was in the state of dizzy self-assurance when it seemed easy to win any sympathy she chose to seek.
For the only other guests—Mrs. Fairford’s husband, and the elderly Charles Bowen who seemed to be her special
