this allowance had been
doubled. If any one had told her, a year earlier, that one of the chief
distractions of her new life would be to invent ways of annoying her
mother-in-law, she would have laughed at the idea of wasting her time on
such trifles. But she found herself with a great deal of time to waste,
and with a fierce desire to spend it in upsetting the immemorial customs
of Saint Desert. Her husband had mastered her in essentials, but she had
discovered innumerable small ways of irritating and hurting him, and
one--and not the least effectual--was to do anything that went counter
to his mother's prejudices. It was not that he always shared her views,
or was a particularly subservient son; but it seemed to be one of his
fundamental principles that a man should respect his mother's wishes,
and see to it that his household respected them. All Frenchmen of
his class appeared to share this view, and to regard it as beyond
discussion: it was based on something so much more Immutable than
personal feeling that one might even hate one's mother and yet insist
that her ideas as to the consumption of fire-wood should be regarded.

The old Marquise, during the cold weather, always sat in her bedroom;
and there, between the tapestried four-poster and the fireplace, the
family grouped itself around the ground-glass of her single carcel lamp.
In the evening, if there were visitors, a fire was lit in the library;
otherwise the family again sat about the Marquise's lamp till the
footman came in at ten with tisane and biscuits de Reims; after which
every one bade the dowager good night and scattered down the corridors
to chill distances marked by tapers floating in cups of oil.

Since Undine's coming the library fire had never been allowed to go out;
and of late, after experimenting with the two drawing-rooms and the
so-called "study" where Raymond kept his guns and saw the bailiff, she
had selected the gallery as the most suitable place for the new and
unfamiliar ceremony of afternoon tea. Afternoon refreshments had never
before been served at Saint Desert except when company was expected;
when they had invariably consisted in a decanter of sweet port and a
plate of small dry cakes--the kind that kept. That the complicated rites
of the tea-urn, with its offering-up of perishable delicacies, should be
enacted for the sole enjoyment of the family, was a thing so unheard of
that for a while Undine found sufficient amusement in ela