t exultation, had confided all her
hopes and plans to her friend, but Mabel took no undue advantage of the
confidence. She was even tactful in her loud fond clumsy way, with a
tact that insistently boomed and buzzed about its victim's head. But one
day she mentioned that she had asked to dinner a gentleman from Little
Rock who had come to Dakota with the same object as themselves, and
whose acquaintance she had made through her lawyer.

The gentleman from Little Rock came to dine, and within a week Undine
understood that Mabel's future was assured. If Van Degen had been at
hand Undine would have smiled with him at poor Mabel's infatuation and
her suitor's crudeness. But Van Degen was not there. He made no sign, he
sent no excuse; he simply continued to absent himself; and it was Undine
who, in due course, had to make way for Mrs. Lipscomb's caller, and sit
upstairs with a novel while the drawing-room below was given up to the
enacting of an actual love-story.

Even then, even to the end, Undine had to admit that Mabel had behaved
"beautifully." But it is comparatively easy to behave beautifully when
one is getting what one wants, and when some one else, who has not
always been altogether kind, is not. The net result of Mrs. Lipscomb's
magnanimity was that when, on the day of parting, she drew Undine to
her bosom with the hand on which her new engagement-ring blazed, Undine
hated her as she hated everything else connected with her vain exile in
the wilderness.

XXVI

The next phase in the unrolling vision was the episode of her return to
New York. She had gone to the Malibran, to her parents--for it was a
moment in her career when she clung passionately to the conformities,
and when the fact of being able to say: "I'm here with my father and
mother" was worth paying for even in the discomfort of that grim abode.
Nevertheless, it was another thorn in her pride that her parents could
not--for the meanest of material reasons--transfer themselves at her
coming to one of the big Fifth Avenue hotels. When she had suggested it
Mr. Spragg had briefly replied that, owing to the heavy expenses of her
divorce suit, he couldn't for the moment afford anything better; and
this announcement cast a deeper gloom over the future.

It was not an occasion for being "nervous," however; she had learned too
many hard facts in the last few months to think of having recourse
to her youthful methods. And something told her that if she ma