Chapter 37

In a drawing-room hung with portraits of high-nosed personages in
perukes and orders, a circle of ladies and gentlemen, looking not unlike
every-day versions of the official figures above their heads, sat
examining with friendly interest a little boy in mourning.

The boy was slim, fair and shy, and his small black figure, islanded
in the middle of the wide lustrous floor, looked curiously lonely
and remote. This effect of remoteness seemed to strike his mother as
something intentional, and almost naughty, for after having launched him
from the door, and waited to judge of the impression he produced, she
came forward and, giving him a slight push, said impatiently: "Paul! Why
don't you go and kiss your new granny?"

The boy, without turning to her, or moving, sent his blue glance gravely
about the circle. "Does she want me to?" he asked, in a tone of evident
apprehension; and on his mother's answering: "Of course, you silly!" he
added earnestly: "How many more do you think there'll be?"

Undine blushed to the ripples of her brilliant hair. "I never knew such
a child! They've turned him into a perfect little savage!"

Raymond de Chelles advanced from behind his mother's chair.

"He won't be a savage long with me," he said, stooping down so that his
fatigued finely-drawn face was close to Paul's. Their eyes met and
the boy smiled. "Come along, old chap," Chelles continued in English,
drawing the little boy after him.

"Il est bien beau," the Marquise de Chelles observed, her eyes turning
from Paul's grave face to her daughter-in-law's vivid countenance.

"Do be nice, darling! Say, 'bonjour, Madame,'" Undine urged.

An odd mingling of emotions stirred in her while she stood watching Paul
make the round of the family group under her husband's guidance. It was
"lovely" to have the child back, and to find him, after their three
years' separation, grown into so endearing a figure: her first glimpse
of him when, in Mrs. Heeny's arms, he had emerged that morning from the
steamer train, had shown what an acquisition he would be. If she had
had any lingering doubts on the point, the impression produced on her
husband would have dispelled them. Chelles had been instantly charmed,
and Paul, in a shy confused way, was already responding to his advances.
The Count and Countess Raymond had returned but a few weeks before
from their protracted wedding journey, and were staying--as they were
apparently to do whenever they came to Paris--with the old Marquis,
Raymond's father, who had amicably proposed that little Paul Marvell
should also share the hospitality of the Hotel de Chelles. Undine, at
first,