It was barely a week ago that her husband had been called to Paris to straighten out a fresh tangle in the affairs of the troublesome brother whose difficulties were apparently a part of the family tradition.  Raymond’s letters had been hurried, his telegrams brief and contradictory, and now, as Undine stood watching for the brougham that was to bring him from the station, she had the sense that with his arrival all her vague fears would be confirmed.  There would be more money to pay out, of course—­since the funds that could not be found for her just needs were apparently always forthcoming to settle Hubert’s scandalous prodigalities—­and that meant a longer perspective of solitude at Saint Desert, and a fresh pretext for postponing the hospitalities that were to follow on their period of mourning.  The brougham—­a vehicle as massive and lumbering as the pair that drew it—­ presently rolled into the court, and Raymond’s sable figure (she had never before seen a man travel in such black clothes) sprang up the steps to the door.  Whenever Undine saw him after an absence she had a curious sense of his coming back from unknown distances and not belonging to her or to any state of things she understood.  Then habit reasserted itself, and she began to think of him again with a querulous familiarity.  But she had learned to hide her feelings, and as he came in she put up her face for a kiss.

“Yes—­everything’s settled—­” his embrace expressed the satisfaction of the man returning from an accomplished task to the joys of his fireside.

“Settled?” Her face kindled.  “Without your having to pay?”

He looked at her with a shrug.  “Of course I’ve had to pay.  Did you suppose Hubert’s creditors would be put off with vanilla eclairs?”

“Oh, if that’s what you mean—­if Hubert has only to wire you at any time to be sure of his affairs being settled—!”

She saw his lips narrow and a line come out between his eyes.  “Wouldn’t it be a happy thought to tell them to bring tea?” he suggested.

“In the library, then.  It’s so cold here—­and the tapestries smell so of rain.”

He paused a moment to scrutinize the long walls, on which the fabulous blues and pinks of the great Boucher series looked as livid as withered roses.  “I suppose they ought to be taken down and aired,” he said.

She thought:  “In this air—­much good it would do them!” But she had already repented her outbreak about Hubert, and she followed her husband into the library with the resolve not to let him see her annoyance.  Compared with the long grey gallery the library, with its brown walls of books, looked warm and home-like, and Raymond seemed to feel the influence of the softer atmosphere.  He turned to his wife and put his arm about her.

“I know it’s been a trial to you, dearest; but this is the last time I shall have to pull the poor boy out.”

In spite of herself she laughed incredulously:  Hubert’s “last times” were a household word.