er right for a few months after Marvell's death, with the express
stipulation that her doing so was only a temporary concession to the
feelings of her husband's family; and she had held out against all
attempts to induce her to surrender Paul permanently. Before her
marriage she had somewhat conspicuously adopted her husband's creed, and
the Dagonets, picturing Paul as the prey of the Jesuits, had made the
mistake of appealing to the courts for his custody. This had confirmed
Undine's resistance, and her determination to keep the child. The case
had been decided in her favour, and she had thereupon demanded, and
obtained, an allowance of five thousand dollars, to be devoted to the
bringing up and education of her son. This sum, added to what Mr. Spragg
had agreed to give her, made up an income which had appreciably bettered
her position, and justified Madame de Trezac's discreet allusions to
her wealth. Nevertheless, it was one of the facts about which she least
liked to think when any chance allusion evoked Ralph's image. The money
was hers, of course; she had a right to it, and she was an ardent
believer in "rights." But she wished she could have got it in some
other way--she hated the thought of it as one more instance of the
perverseness with which things she was entitled to always came to her as
if they had been stolen.

The approach of summer, and the culmination of the Paris season, swept
aside such thoughts. The Countess Raymond de Chelles, contrasting
her situation with that of Mrs. Undine Marvell, and the fulness and
animation of her new life with the vacant dissatisfied days which
had followed on her return from Dakota, forgot the smallness of her
apartment, the inconvenient proximity of Paul and his nurse, the
interminable round of visits with her mother-in-law, and the long
dinners in the solemn hotels of all the family connection. The world was
radiant, the lights were lit, the music playing; she was still young,
and better-looking than ever, with a Countess's coronet, a famous
chateau and a handsome and popular husband who adored her. And then
suddenly the lights went out and the music stopped when one day Raymond,
putting his arm about her, said in his tenderest tones: "And now, my
dear, the world's had you long enough and it's my turn. What do you say
to going down to Saint Desert?"

XXXVIII

In a window of the long gallery of the chateau de Saint Desert the
new Marquise de Chelles stood looking