Chapter 3 - Page 2

had looked for some brilliant
youths of her own age--in her inmost heart she had looked for Mr.
Popple. He was not there, however, and of the other men one, whom they
called Mr. Bowen, was hopelessly elderly--she supposed he was the
husband of the white-haired lady--and the other two, who seemed to be
friends of young Marvell's, were both lacking in Claud Walsingham's
dash.

Undine sat between Mr. Bowen and young Marvell, who struck her as very
"sweet" (it was her word for friendliness), but even shyer than at the
hotel dance. Yet she was not sure if he were shy, or if his quietness
were only a new kind of self-possession which expressed itself
negatively instead of aggressively. Small, well-knit, fair, he sat
stroking his slight blond moustache and looking at her with kindly,
almost tender eyes; but he left it to his sister and the others to draw
her out and fit her into the pattern.

Mrs. Fairford talked so well that the girl wondered why Mrs. Heeny had
found her lacking in conversation. But though Undine thought silent
people awkward she was not easily impressed by verbal fluency. All the
ladies in Apex City were more voluble than Mrs. Fairford, and had
a larger vocabulary: the difference was that with Mrs. Fairford
conversation seemed to be a concert and not a solo. She kept drawing in
the others, giving each a turn, beating time for them with her smile,
and somehow harmonizing and linking together what they said. She took
particular pains to give Undine her due part in the performance; but
the girl's expansive impulses were always balanced by odd reactions of
mistrust, and to-night the latter prevailed. She meant to watch and
listen without letting herself go, and she sat very straight and pink,
answering promptly but briefly, with the nervous laugh that punctuated
all her phrases--saying "I don't care if I do" when her host asked her
to try some grapes, and "I wouldn't wonder" when she thought any one was
trying to astonish her.

This state of lucidity enabled her to take note of all that was being
said. The talk ran more on general questions, and less on people, than
she was used to; but though the allusions to pictures and books escaped
her, she caught and stored up every personal reference, and the pink in
her cheeks deepened at a random mention of Mr. Popple.

"Yes--he's doing me," Mrs. Peter Van Degen was saying, in her slightly
drawling voice. "He's doing everybody this year, you know--"

"As if that were a reason!" Undine heard Mrs. Fairford breathe to Mr.
Bowen; who replied, at the same pitch: "It's a Van Degen reason, isn't
it?"--to which Mrs. Fairford shrugged assentingly.

"That delightful