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There was, in particular, another drawing-room, which she now described as Peter's creation, but which Ralph knew to be partly hers: a heavily decorated apartment, where Popple's portrait of her throned over a waste of gilt furniture.
Undine wondered. Some intuition told her that, alone of all the women present, Clare might have greeted her kindly; but she hung back, and Mrs. Harmon Driscoll surged by on Popple's arm. Popple crimsoned, coughed, and signalled despotically to Mrs. Driscoll's footman.
Ralph struck an attitude of mock consternation. "Ah, in that case ! In Popple's society who wouldn't forget the flight of time?" He had recovered his usual easy tone, and Laura sat that Mrs. Van Degen's words had dispelled his preoccupation. He turned to his cousin. "Will you trust me with your present for the boy?" Clare gave him the parcel. "I'm sorry not to give it myself.
"I should say I did. I manicured him for his first society portrait a full-length of Mrs. Harmon B. Driscoll." Mrs. Heeny smiled indulgently on her hearers. "I know everybody. If they don't know ME they ain't in it, and Claud Walsingham Popple's in it. But he ain't nearly AS in it," she continued judicially, "as Ralph Marvell the little fellow, as you call him."
Any triumph in which she shared left a glow in her veins, and the success of the picture obscured all other impressions. She saw herself throning in a central panel at the spring exhibition, with the crowd pushing about the picture, repeating her name; and she decided to stop on the way home and telephone her press-agent to do a paragraph about Popple's tea.
That's what they ought to charge for, ain't it, Popp?" Undine took this with cool disdain, but Mr. Popple's sensibilities were offended. "My dear Peter really the artist, you understand, sees all this as a pure question of colour, of pattern; and it's a point of honour with the MAN to steel himself against the personal seduction." Mr.
A little later a taxicab drew up at the curb, and the two disguised secret-service agents sauntered down the high steps of Mrs. Popple's brownstone house, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and got in. "Where to?" said the driver, with rather a bold leer. The average lady who descended or ascended Mrs. Popple's steps; was not considered respectable even by taxi-drivers.
Hatch-Mallard has evidently never read Popple's County History," said Mrs. Dole icily, "or she would know that the Cullumpton ghost has a wealth of evidence behind it " "Oh, Popple!" exclaimed Mrs. Hatch-Mallard scornfully; "any rubbishy old story is good enough for him. Popple, indeed! Now my uncle's ghost was seen by a Rural Dean, who was also a Justice of the Peace.
Thus it was that a man should talk to a true woman but how few whom she had known possessed the secret! Mr. Popple's rhetoric was drawn from more familiar sources, and abounded in favourite phrases and in moving reminiscences of the Fifth Reader.
Undine sat well forward, curving toward him a little, as she had seen the other women do, but holding back sufficiently to let it be visible to the house that she was conversing with no less a person than Mr. Peter Van Degen. Mr. Popple's talk was certainly more brilliant and purposeful, and she saw him cast longing glances at her from behind Mrs.
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