“They certainly do things with style over here—­but it’s kinder one-horse after New York, ain’t it?  Is this what they call their season?  Why, you dined home two nights last week.  They ought to come over to New York and see!” And she poured into Undine’s half-envious ear a list of the entertainments which had illuminated the last weeks of the New York winter.  “I suppose you’ll begin to give parties as soon as ever you get into a house of your own.  You’re not going to have one?  Oh, well, then you’ll give a lot of big week-ends at your place down in the Shatter-country—­that’s where the swells all go to in the summer time, ain’t it?  But I dunno what your ma would say if she knew you were going to live on with his folks after you’re done honey-mooning.  Why, we read in the papers you were going to live in some grand hotel or other—­oh, they call their houses hotels, do they?  That’s funny:  I suppose it’s because they let out part of ’em.  Well, you look handsomer than ever.  Undine; I’ll take that back to your mother, anyhow.  And he’s dead in love, I can see that; reminds me of the way—­” but she broke off suddenly, as if something in Undine’s look had silenced her.

Even to herself.  Undine did not like to call up the image of Ralph Marvell; and any mention of his name gave her a vague sense of distress.  His death had released her, had given her what she wanted; yet she could honestly say to herself that she had not wanted him to die—­at least not to die like that....  People said at the time that it was the hot weather—­his own family had said so:  he had never quite got over his attack of pneumonia, and the sudden rise of temperature—­one of the fierce “heat-waves” that devastate New York in summer—­had probably affected his brain:  the doctors said such cases were not uncommon....  She had worn black for a few weeks—­not quite mourning, but something decently regretful (the dress-makers were beginning to provide a special garb for such cases); and even since her remarriage, and the lapse of a year, she continued to wish that she could have got what she wanted without having had to pay that particular price for it.

This feeling was intensified by an incident—­in itself far from unwelcome—­which had occurred about three months after Ralph’s death.  Her lawyers had written to say that the sum of a hundred thousand dollars had been paid over to Marvell’s estate by the Apex Consolidation Company; and as Marvell had left a will bequeathing everything he possessed to his son, this unexpected windfall handsomely increased Paul’s patrimony.  Undine had never relinquished her claim on her child; she had merely, by the advice of her lawyers, waived the assertion of her right for a few months after Marvell’s death, with the express stipulation that her doing so was only a temporary concession to the feelings of her husband’s family; and she had held out against all attempts to induce her to surrender Paul permanently.  Before