Produced by Steve Harris and PG Distributed Proofreaders
by EDITH WHARTON
1913
"Undine Spragg—how can you?" her mother wailed, raising aprematurely-wrinkled hand heavy with rings to defend the note which alanguid "bell-boy" had just brought in.
But her defence was as feeble as her protest, and she continued tosmile on her visitor while Miss Spragg, with a turn of her quick youngfingers, possessed herself of the missive and withdrew to the window toread it.
"I guess it's meant for me," she merely threw over her shoulder at hermother.
"Did you EVER, Mrs. Heeny?" Mrs. Spragg murmured with deprecating pride.
Mrs. Heeny, a stout professional-looking person in a waterproof, herrusty veil thrown back, and a shabby alligator bag at her feet, followedthe mother's glance with good-humoured approval.
"I never met with a lovelier form," she agreed, answering the spiritrather than the letter of her hostess's enquiry.
Mrs. Spragg and her visitor were enthroned in two heavy gilt armchairsin one of the private drawing-rooms of the Hotel Stentorian. The Spraggrooms were known as one of the Looey suites, and the drawing-room walls,above their wainscoting of highly-varnished mahogany, were hung withsalmon-pink damask and adorned with oval portraits of Marie Antoinetteand the Princess de Lamballe. In the centre of the florid carpet a gilttable with a top of Mexican onyx sustained a palm in a gilt basket tiedwith a pink bow. But for this ornament, and a copy of "The Hound of theBaskervilles" which lay beside it, the room showed no traces of humanuse, and Mrs. Spragg herself wore as complete an air of detachment as ifshe had been a wax figure in a show-window. Her attire was fashionableenough to justify such a post, and her pale soft-cheeked face, withpuffy eye-lids and drooping mouth, suggested a partially-melted waxfigure which had run to double-chin.
Mrs. Heeny, in comparison, had a reassuring look of solidity andreality. The planting of her firm black bulk in its chair, and thegrasp of her broad red hands on the gilt arms, bespoke an organized andself-reliant activity, accounted for by the fact that Mrs. Heeny was a"society" manicure and masseuse. Toward Mrs. Spragg and her daughtershe filled the double role of manipulator and friend; and it was in thelatter capacity that, her day's task ended, she had dropped in for amoment to "cheer up" the lonely ladies of the Stentorian.
The young girl whose "form" had won Mrs. Heeny's professionalcommendation suddenly shifted its lovely lines as she turned back fromthe window.
"Here—you can have it after all," she said, crumpling the note andtossing it with a contemptuous gesture into her mother's lap.
"Why—isn't it from Mr. Popple?" Mrs. Spragg exclaimed unguardedly.
"No—it isn't. What made you think I thought it was?" snapped herdaughter; but the next instant she added, with an outbreak of childishdisappointment: "It's only from Mr. Marvell's sister—at least she saysshe's his sister."
Mrs. Spragg, with a puzzled frown, groped for her eye-glass among thejet fringes of her tightly-girded front.
Mrs. Heeny's small blue eyes shot out sparks of curiosity.
"Marvell—what Marvell is that?"
The girl explained languidly: "A little fellow—I think Mr. Popple saidhis name was Ralph"; while her mother continued: