ration for her seemed not only to
have increased but to have acquired a different character. Undine, at
an earlier stage in her career, might not have known exactly what the
difference signified; but it was as clear to her now as if the Princess
had said--what her beaming eyes seemed, in fact, to convey--"I'm only
too glad to do my cousin the same kind of turn you're doing me."

But Undine's increased experience, if it had made her more vigilant,
had also given her a clearer measure of her power. She saw at once
that Chelles, in seeking to meet her again, was not in quest of a mere
passing adventure. He was evidently deeply drawn to her, and her present
situation, if it made it natural to regard her as more accessible, had
not altered the nature of his feeling. She saw and weighed all this in
the first five minutes during which, over tea and muffins, the Princess
descanted on her luck in happening to run across her cousin, and
Chelles, his enchanted eyes on Undine, expressed his sense of his good
fortune. He was staying, it appeared, with friends at Beaulieu, and had
run over to Nice that afternoon by the merest chance: he added that,
having just learned of his aunt's presence in the neighbourhood, he had
already planned to present his homage to her.

"Oh, don't come to us--we're too dull!" the Princess exclaimed. "Let us
run over occasionally and call on you: we're dying for a pretext, aren't
we?" she added, smiling at Undine.

The latter smiled back vaguely, and looked across the room. Moffatt,
looking flushed and foolish, was just pushing back his chair. To carry
off his embarrassment he put an additional touch of importance; and as
he swaggered out behind his companion, Undine said to herself, with a
shiver: "If he'd been alone they would have found me taking tea with
him."

Undine, during the ensuing weeks, returned several times to Nice with
the Princess; but, to the latter's surprise, she absolutely refused to
have Raymond de Chelles included in their luncheon-parties, or even
apprised in advance of their expeditions.

The Princess, always impatient of unnecessary dissimulation, had not
attempted to keep up the feint of the interesting invalid at Cimiez. She
confessed to Undine that she was drawn to Nice by the presence there of
the person without whom, for the moment, she found life intolerable,
and whom she could not well receive under the same roof with her little
girls and her mother. She appealed to Und