day was a long way off, of course, but the chill of it had brushed
her face; and she was no longer heedless of such signs. She resolved to
cultivate all the arts of patience and compliance, and habit might have
helped them to take root if they had not been nipped by a new cataclysm.

It was barely a week ago that her husband had been called to Paris to
straighten out a fresh tangle in the affairs of the troublesome brother
whose difficulties were apparently a part of the family tradition.
Raymond's letters had been hurried, his telegrams brief and
contradictory, and now, as Undine stood watching for the brougham that
was to bring him from the station, she had the sense that with his
arrival all her vague fears would be confirmed. There would be more
money to pay out, of course--since the funds that could not be found for
her just needs were apparently always forthcoming to settle Hubert's
scandalous prodigalities--and that meant a longer perspective of
solitude at Saint Desert, and a fresh pretext for postponing the
hospitalities that were to follow on their period of mourning. The
brougham--a vehicle as massive and lumbering as the pair that drew it--
presently rolled into the court, and Raymond's sable figure (she had
never before seen a man travel in such black clothes) sprang up the
steps to the door. Whenever Undine saw him after an absence she had
a curious sense of his coming back from unknown distances and not
belonging to her or to any state of things she understood. Then habit
reasserted itself, and she began to think of him again with a querulous
familiarity. But she had learned to hide her feelings, and as he came in
she put up her face for a kiss.

"Yes--everything's settled--" his embrace expressed the satisfaction of
the man returning from an accomplished task to the joys of his fireside.

"Settled?" Her face kindled. "Without your having to pay?"

He looked at her with a shrug. "Of course I've had to pay. Did you
suppose Hubert's creditors would be put off with vanilla eclairs?"

"Oh, if THAT'S what you mean--if Hubert has only to wire you at any time
to be sure of his affairs being settled--!"

She saw his lips narrow and a line come out between his eyes. "Wouldn't
it be a happy thought to tell them to bring tea?" he suggested.

"In the library, then. It's so cold here--and the tapestries smell so of
rain."

He paused a moment to scrutinize the long walls, on which the fabulous
blues and pinks o