The latter smiled back vaguely, and looked across the room.  Moffatt, looking flushed and foolish, was just pushing back his chair.  To carry off his embarrassment he put an additional touch of importance; and as he swaggered out behind his companion, Undine said to herself, with a shiver:  “If he’d been alone they would have found me taking tea with him.”

Undine, during the ensuing weeks, returned several times to Nice with the Princess; but, to the latter’s surprise, she absolutely refused to have Raymond de Chelles included in their luncheon-parties, or even apprised in advance of their expeditions.

The Princess, always impatient of unnecessary dissimulation, had not attempted to keep up the feint of the interesting invalid at Cimiez.  She confessed to Undine that she was drawn to Nice by the presence there of the person without whom, for the moment, she found life intolerable, and whom she could not well receive under the same roof with her little girls and her mother.  She appealed to Undine’s sisterly heart to feel for her in her difficulty, and implied that—­as her conduct had already proved—­she would always be ready to render her friend a like service.  It was at this point that Undine checked her by a decided word.  “I understand your position, and I’m very sorry for you, of course,” she began (the Princess stared at the “sorry").  “Your secret’s perfectly safe with me, and I’ll do anything I can for you...but if I go to Nice with you again you must promise not to ask your cousin to meet us.”

The Princess’s face expressed the most genuine astonishment.  “Oh, my dear, do forgive me if I’ve been stupid!  He admires you so tremendously; and I thought—­”

“You’ll do as I ask, please—­won’t you?” Undine went on, ignoring the interruption and looking straight at her under level brows; and the Princess, with a shrug, merely murmured:  “What a pity!  I fancied you liked him.”

XXIX

The early spring found Undine once more in Paris.

She had every reason to be satisfied with the result of the course she had pursued since she had pronounced her ultimatum on the subject of Raymond de Chelles.  She had continued to remain on the best of terms with the Princess, to rise in the estimation of the old Duchess, and to measure the rapidity of her ascent in the upward gaze of Madame de Trezac; and she had given Chelles to understand that, if he wished to renew their acquaintance, he must do so in the shelter of his venerable aunt’s protection.

To the Princess she was careful to make her attitude equally clear.  “I like your cousin very much—­he’s delightful, and if I’m in Paris this spring I hope I shall see a great deal of him.  But I know how easy it is for a woman in my position to get talked about—­and I have my little boy to consider.”

Nevertheless, whenever Chelles came over from Beaulieu to spend a day with his aunt and cousin—­an excursion he not infrequently repeated—­Undine was at no pains to conceal her pleasure.  Nor was there anything calculated in her attitude.  Chelles seemed to her more charming than ever, and the warmth of his wooing was in flattering contrast to the cool reserve of his manners.  At last she felt herself alive and young again, and it became a joy to look in her glass and to try on her new hats and dresses...