Van Degens?"

Mrs. Heeny sounded a scornful laugh. "Look at here, now, you unbelieving
girl! As sure as I'm standing here before you, I've seen Mrs. Harmon B.
Driscoll of Fifth Avenue laying in her pink velvet bed with Honiton lace
sheets on it, and crying her eyes out because she couldn't get asked
to one of Mrs. Paul Marvell's musicals. She'd never 'a dreamt of being
asked to a dinner there! Not all of her money couldn't 'a bought her
that--and she knows it!"

Undine stood for a moment with bright cheeks and parted lips; then she
flung her soft arms about the masseuse. "Oh Mrs. Heeny--you're lovely
to me!" she breathed, her lips on Mrs. Heeny's rusty veil; while the
latter, freeing herself with a good-natured laugh, said as she turned
away: "Go steady. Undine, and you'll get anywheres."

GO STEADY, UNDINE! Yes, that was the advice she needed. Sometimes, in
her dark moods, she blamed her parents for not having given it to her.
She was so young... and they had told her so little! As she looked back
she shuddered at some of her escapes. Even since they had come to New
York she had been on the verge of one or two perilous adventures, and
there had been a moment during their first winter when she had actually
engaged herself to the handsome Austrian riding-master who accompanied
her in the Park. He had carelessly shown her a card-case with a coronet,
and had confided in her that he had been forced to resign from a crack
cavalry regiment for fighting a duel about a Countess; and as a result
of these confidences she had pledged herself to him, and bestowed on him
her pink pearl ring in exchange for one of twisted silver, which he said
the Countess had given him on her deathbed with the request that he
should never take it off till he met a woman more beautiful than
herself.

Soon afterward, luckily. Undine had run across Mabel Lipscomb, whom she
had known at a middle western boarding-school as Mabel Blitch. Miss
Blitch occupied a position of distinction as the only New York girl at
the school, and for a time there had been sharp rivalry for her
favour between Undine and Indiana Frusk, whose parents had somehow
contrived--for one term--to obtain her admission to the same
establishment. In spite of Indiana's unscrupulous methods, and of a
certain violent way she had of capturing attention, the victory remained
with Undine, whom Mabel pronounced more refined; and the discomfited
Indiana, denouncing her schoolmates as a "bu