With a supple twist Undine slipped from Mrs. Heeny’s hold.

“Engaged?  Mercy, yes!  Didn’t you know?  To the Prince of Wales.  I broke it off because I wouldn’t live in the Tower.”

Mrs. Spragg, lifting the dress cautiously over her arm, advanced with a reassured smile.

“I s’pose Undie’ll go to Europe now,” she said to Mrs. Heeny.

“I guess Undie will!” the young lady herself declared.  “We’re going to sail right afterward.—­Here, mother, do be careful of my hair!” She ducked gracefully to slip into the lacy fabric which her mother held above her head.  As she rose Venus-like above its folds there was a tap on the door, immediately followed by its tentative opening.

“Mabel!” Undine muttered, her brows lowering like her father’s; and Mrs. Spragg, wheeling about to screen her daughter, addressed herself protestingly to the half-open door.

“Who’s there?  Oh, that you, Mrs. Lipscomb?  Well, I don’t know as you can—­Undie isn’t half dressed yet—­”

“Just like her—­always pushing in!” Undine murmured as she slipped her arms into their transparent sleeves.

“Oh, that don’t matter—­I’ll help dress her!” Mrs. Lipscomb’s large blond person surged across the threshold.  “Seems to me I ought to lend a hand to-night, considering I was the one that introduced them!”

Undine forced a smile, but Mrs. Spragg, her soft wrinkles deepening with resentment, muttered to Mrs. Heeny, as she bent down to shake out the girl’s train:  “I guess my daughter’s only got to show herself—­”

The first meeting with old Mr. Dagonet was less formidable than Undine had expected.  She had been once before to the house in Washington Square, when, with her mother, she had returned Mrs. Marvell’s ceremonial visit; but on that occasion Ralph’s grandfather had not been present.  All the rites connected with her engagement were new and mysterious to Undine, and none more so than the unaccountable necessity of “dragging”—­as she phrased it—­Mrs. Spragg into the affair.  It was an accepted article of the Apex creed that parental detachment should be completest at the moment when the filial fate was decided; and to find that New York reversed this rule was as puzzling to Undine as to her mother.  Mrs. Spragg was so unprepared for the part she was to play that on the occasion of her visit to Mrs. Marvell her helplessness had infected Undine, and their half-hour in the sober faded drawing-room remained among the girl’s most unsatisfactory memories.

She re-entered it alone with more assurance.  Her confidence in her beauty had hitherto carried her through every ordeal; and it was fortified now by the feeling of power that came with the sense of being loved.  If they would only leave her mother out she was sure, in her own phrase, of being able to “run the thing”; and Mrs. Spragg had providentially been left out of the Dagonet dinner.