Chapter 27 - Page 2

careless of the
conventions; but that she should boast of her intimacy with Madame
Adelschein, and use it as a pretext for naming herself, overthrew all
Undine's hierarchies.

"Yes--it's hideously dull here, and I'm dying of it. Do come over and
speak to my mother. She's dying of it too; but don't tell her so,
because she hasn't found it out. There were so many things our mothers
never found out," the Princess rambled on, with her half-mocking
half-intimate smile; and in another moment Undine, thrilled at having
Mrs. Spragg thus coupled with a Duchess, found herself seated between
mother and daughter, and responding by a radiant blush to the elder
lady's amiable opening: "You know my nephew Raymond--he's your great
admirer."

How had it happened, whither would it lead, how long could it last? The
questions raced through Undine's brain as she sat listening to her
new friends--they seemed already too friendly to be called
acquaintances!--replying to their enquiries, and trying to think far
enough ahead to guess what they would expect her to say, and what tone
it would be well to take. She was used to such feats of mental agility,
and it was instinctive with her to become, for the moment, the person
she thought her interlocutors expected her to be; but she had never had
quite so new a part to play at such short notice. She took her cue,
however, from the fact that the Princess Estradina, in her mother's
presence, made no farther allusion to her dear friend Sacha, and seemed
somehow, though she continued to chat on in the same easy strain, to
look differently and throw out different implications. All these shades
of demeanour were immediately perceptible to Undine, who tried to adapt
herself to them by combining in her manner a mixture of Apex dash and
New York dignity; and the result was so successful that when she rose to
go the Princess, with a hand on her arm, said almost wistfully: "You're
staying on too? Then do take pity on us! We might go on some trips
together; and in the evenings we could make a bridge."

A new life began for Undine. The Princess, chained her mother's side,
and frankly restive under her filial duty, clung to her new acquaintance
with a persistence too flattering to be analyzed. "My dear, I was on
the brink of suicide when I saw your name in the visitors' list," she
explained; and Undine felt like answering that she had nearly reached
the same pass when the Princess's thin little hand had been held out
to her. For the moment she was dizzy with the effect of that random
gesture. Here she was, at the lowest ebb of her fortunes, miraculously
rehabilitated, reinstated, and restored to the old victorious sense of
her youth and her power!