It was dreadful that her
little boy should be growing up far away from her, perhaps dressed in
clothes she would have hated; and wicked and unnatural that when he saw
her picture he should have to be told who she was. "If I could only meet
some good man who would give me a home and be a father to him," she
thought--and the tears overflowed and ran down.
Even as they fell, the door was thrown open to admit Raymond de Chelles,
and the consciousness of the moisture still glistening on her cheeks
perhaps strengthened her resolve to resist him, and thus made her more
imperiously to be desired. Certain it is that on that day her suitor
first alluded to a possibility which Madame de Trezac had prudently
refrained from suggesting, there fell upon Undine's attentive ears the
magic phrase "annulment of marriage."
Her alert intelligence immediately set to work in this new direction;
but almost at the same moment she became aware of a subtle change
of tone in the Princess and her mother, a change reflected in the
corresponding decline of Madame de Trezac's cordiality. Undine, since
her arrival in Paris, had necessarily been less in the Princess's
company, but when they met she had found her as friendly as ever. It was
manifestly not a failing of the Princess's to forget past favours, and
though increasingly absorbed by the demands of town life she treated her
new friend with the same affectionate frankness, and Undine was given
frequent opportunities to enlarge her Parisian acquaintance, not only in
the Princess's intimate circle but in the majestic drawing-rooms of the
Hotel de Dordogne.
Pages:
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367