an Asiatic conqueror.

"And what are you going to do next?" she asked, almost breathlessly,
when he had ended.

"Oh, there's always a lot to do next. Business never goes to sleep."

"Yes; but I mean besides business."

"Why--everything I can, I guess." He leaned back in his chair with an
air of placid power, as if he were so sure of getting what he wanted
that there was no longer any use in hurrying, huge as his vistas had
become.

She continued to question him, and he began to talk of his growing
passion for pictures and furniture, and of his desire to form a
collection which should be a great representative assemblage of
unmatched specimens. As he spoke she saw his expression change, and his
eyes grow younger, almost boyish, with a concentrated look in them that
reminded her of long-forgotten things.

"I mean to have the best, you know; not just to get ahead of the other
fellows, but because I know it when I see it. I guess that's the only
good reason," he concluded; and he added, looking at her with a smile:
"It was what you were always after, wasn't it?"

XLII

Undine had gained her point, and the entresol of the Hotel de Chelles
reopened its doors for the season.

Hubert and his wife, in expectation of the birth of an heir, had
withdrawn to the sumptuous chateau which General Arlington had hired for
them near Compiegne, and Undine was at least spared the sight of their
bright windows and animated stairway. But she had to take her share of
the felicitations which the whole far-reaching circle of friends and
relations distributed to every member of Hubert's family on the approach
of the happy event. Nor was this the hardest of her trials. Raymond had
done what she asked--he had stood out against his mother's protests, set
aside considerations of prudence, and consented to go up to Paris for
two months; but he had done so on the understanding that during their
stay they should exercise the most unremitting economy. As dinner-giving
put the heaviest strain on their budget, all hospitality was suspended;
and when Undine attempted to invite a few friends informally she was
warned that she could not do so without causing the gravest offense to
the many others genealogically entitled to the same attention.

Raymond's insistence on this rule was simply part of an elaborate and
inveterate system of "relations" (the whole of French social life seemed
to depend on the exact interpretation of that word), and Und