Chapter 38 - Page 2

of fresh air and outdoor activity gave her back a bloom that
reflected itself in her tranquillized mood. She was the more resigned to
this interlude because she was so sure of its not lasting. Before they
left Paris a doctor had been found to say that Paul--who was certainly
looking pale and pulled-down--was in urgent need of sea air, and Undine
had nearly convinced her husband of the expediency of hiring a chalet at
Deauville for July and August, when this plan, and with it every other
prospect of escape, was dashed by the sudden death of the old Marquis.

Undine, at first, had supposed that the resulting change could not
be other than favourable. She had been on too formal terms with her
father-in-law--a remote and ceremonious old gentleman to whom her own
personality was evidently an insoluble enigma--to feel more than the
merest conventional pang at his death; and it was certainly "more fun"
to be a marchioness than a countess, and to know that one's husband
was the head of the house. Besides, now they would have the chateau to
themselves--or at least the old Marquise, when she came, would be there
as a guest and not a ruler--and visions of smart house-parties and big
shoots lit up the first weeks of Undine's enforced seclusion. Then, by
degrees, the inexorable conditions of French mourning closed in on
her. Immediately after the long-drawn funeral observances the bereaved
family--mother, daughters, sons and sons-in-law--came down to
seclude themselves at Saint Desert; and Undine, through the slow hot
crape-smelling months, lived encircled by shrouded images of woe in
which the only live points were the eyes constantly fixed on her least
movements. The hope of escaping to the seaside with Paul vanished in
the pained stare with which her mother-in-law received the suggestion.
Undine learned the next day that it had cost the old Marquise a
sleepless night, and might have had more distressing results had it not
been explained as a harmless instance of transatlantic oddness. Raymond
entreated his wife to atone for her involuntary legereté by submitting
with a good grace to the usages of her adopted country; and he seemed to
regard the remaining months of the summer as hardly long enough for this
act of expiation. As Undine looked back on them, they appeared to have
been composed of an interminable succession of identical days, in which
attendance at early mass (in the coroneted gallery she had once so
glowingly depicted to Van Degen) was followed by a great deal of
conversational sitting about, a great deal of excellent eating, an
occasional drive to the nearest town behind a pair of heavy draft
horses, and long evenings in a lamp-heated drawing-room with all the
windows shut, and the stout cure