The clearness with which he judged the girl and himself seemed the surest proof that his feeling was more than a surface thrill.  He was not blind to her crudity and her limitations, but they were a part of her grace and her persuasion.  Diverse et ondoyante—­so he had seen her from the first.  But was not that merely the sign of a quicker response to the world’s manifold appeal?  There was Harriet Ray, sealed up tight in the vacuum of inherited opinion, where not a breath of fresh sensation could get at her:  there could be no call to rescue young ladies so secured from the perils of reality!  Undine had no such traditional safeguards—­Ralph guessed Mrs. Spragg’s opinions to be as fluid as her daughter’s—­and the girl’s very sensitiveness to new impressions, combined with her obvious lack of any sense of relative values, would make her an easy prey to the powers of folly.  He seemed to see her—­as he sat there, pressing his fists into his temples—­he seemed to see her like a lovely rock-bound Andromeda, with the devouring monster Society careering up to make a mouthful of her; and himself whirling down on his winged horse—­just Pegasus turned Rosinante for the nonce—­to cut her bonds, snatch her up, and whirl her back into the blue...

VII

Some two months later than the date of young Marvell’s midnight vigil, Mrs. Heeny, seated on a low chair at Undine’s knee, gave the girl’s left hand an approving pat as she laid aside her lapful of polishers.

“There!  I guess you can put your ring on again,” she said with a laugh of jovial significance; and Undine, echoing the laugh in a murmur of complacency, slipped on the fourth finger of her recovered hand a band of sapphires in an intricate setting.

Mrs. Heeny took up the hand again.  “Them’s old stones, Undine—­they’ve got a different look,” she said, examining the ring while she rubbed her cushioned palm over the girl’s brilliant finger-tips.  “And the setting’s quaint—­I wouldn’t wonder but what it was one of old Gran’ma Dagonet’s.”

Mrs. Spragg, hovering near in fond beatitude, looked up quickly.

“Why, don’t you s’pose he bought it for her, Mrs. Heeny?  It came in a Tiff’ny box.”

The manicure laughed again.  “Of course he’s had Tiff’ny rub it up.  Ain’t you ever heard of ancestral jewels, Mrs. Spragg?  In the Eu-ropean aristocracy they never go out and buy engagement-rings; and Undine’s marrying into our aristocracy.”

Mrs. Spragg looked relieved.  “Oh, I thought maybe they were trying to scrimp on the ring—­”

Mrs. Heeny, shrugging away this explanation, rose from her seat and rolled back her shiny black sleeves.

“Look at here, Undine, if you really want me to do your hair it’s time we got to work.”

The girl swung about in her seat so that she faced the mirror on the dressing-table.  Her shoulders shone through transparencies of lace and muslin which slipped back as she lifted her arms to draw the tortoise-shell pins from her hair.