“And what are you going to do next?” she
asked, almost breathlessly, when he had ended.
“Oh, there’s always a lot to do next.
Business never goes to sleep.”
“Yes; but I mean besides business.”
“Why—everything I can, I guess.”
He leaned back in his chair with an air of placid
power, as if he were so sure of getting what he wanted
that there was no longer any use in hurrying, huge
as his vistas had become.
She continued to question him, and he began to talk
of his growing passion for pictures and furniture,
and of his desire to form a collection which should
be a great representative assemblage of unmatched
specimens. As he spoke she saw his expression
change, and his eyes grow younger, almost boyish,
with a concentrated look in them that reminded her
of long-forgotten things.
“I mean to have the best, you know; not just
to get ahead of the other fellows, but because I know
it when I see it. I guess that’s the only
good reason,” he concluded; and he added, looking
at her with a smile: “It was what you were
always after, wasn’t it?”
Undine had gained her point, and the entresol of the
Hotel de Chelles reopened its doors for the season.
Hubert and his wife, in expectation of the birth of
an heir, had withdrawn to the sumptuous chateau which
General Arlington had hired for them near Compiegne,
and Undine was at least spared the sight of their
bright windows and animated stairway. But she
had to take her share of the felicitations which the
whole far-reaching circle of friends and relations
distributed to every member of Hubert’s family
on the approach of the happy event. Nor was this
the hardest of her trials. Raymond had done what
she asked—he had stood out against his mother’s
protests, set aside considerations of prudence, and
consented to go up to Paris for two months; but he
had done so on the understanding that during their
stay they should exercise the most unremitting economy.
As dinner-giving put the heaviest strain on their
budget, all hospitality was suspended; and when Undine
attempted to invite a few friends informally she was
warned that she could not do so without causing the
gravest offense to the many others genealogically
entitled to the same attention.
Raymond’s insistence on this rule was simply
part of an elaborate and inveterate system of “relations”
(the whole of French social life seemed to depend
on the exact interpretation of that word), and Undine
felt the uselessness of struggling against such mysterious
inhibitions. He reminded her, however, that their
inability to receive would give them all the more
opportunity for going out, and he showed himself more
socially disposed than in the past. But his concession
did not result as she had hoped. They were asked
out as much as ever, but they were asked to big dinners,
to impersonal crushes, to the kind of entertainment
it is a slight to be omitted from but no compliment
to be included in. Nothing could have been more
galling to Undine, and she frankly bewailed the fact
to Madame de Trezac.
