poured into Undine's half-envious ear a list of
the entertainments which had illuminated the last weeks of the New York
winter. "I suppose you'll begin to give parties as soon as ever you get
into a house of your own. You're not going to have one? Oh, well,
then you'll give a lot of big week-ends at your place down in the
Shatter-country--that's where the swells all go to in the summer time,
ain't it? But I dunno what your ma would say if she knew you were going
to live on with HIS folks after you're done honey-mooning. Why, we read
in the papers you were going to live in some grand hotel or other--oh,
they call their houses HOTELS, do they? That's funny: I suppose it's
because they let out part of 'em. Well, you look handsomer than ever.
Undine; I'll take THAT back to your mother, anyhow. And he's dead
in love, I can see that; reminds me of the way--" but she broke off
suddenly, as if something in Undine's look had silenced her.

Even to herself. Undine did not like to call up the image of Ralph
Marvell; and any mention of his name gave her a vague sense of distress.
His death had released her, had given her what she wanted; yet she could
honestly say to herself that she had not wanted him to die--at least
not to die like that.... People said at the time that it was the hot
weather--his own family had said so: he had never quite got over his
attack of pneumonia, and the sudden rise of temperature--one of the
fierce "heat-waves" that devastate New York in summer--had probably
affected his brain: the doctors said such cases were not uncommon....
She had worn black for a few weeks--not quite mourning, but something
decently regretful (the dress-makers were beginning to provide a special
garb for such cases); and even since her remarriage, and the lapse of
a year, she continued to wish that she could have got what she wanted
without having had to pay that particular price for it.

This feeling was intensified by an incident--in itself far from
unwelcome--which had occurred about three months after Ralph's death.
Her lawyers had written to say that the sum of a hundred thousand
dollars had been paid over to Marvell's estate by the Apex Consolidation
Company; and as Marvell had left a will bequeathing everything he
possessed to his son, this unexpected windfall handsomely increased
Paul's patrimony. Undine had never relinquished her claim on her child;
she had merely, by the advice of her lawyers, waived the assertion of
h