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The planting of her firm black bulk in its chair, and the grasp of her broad red hands on the gilt arms, bespoke an organized and self-reliant activity, accounted for by the fact that Mrs. Heeny was a "society" manicure and masseuse. Toward Mrs.
Heeny who peopled the solitude of the long ghostly days with lively anecdotes of the Van Degens, the Driscolls, the Chauncey Ellings and the other social potentates whose least doings Mrs. Spragg and Undine had followed from afar in the Apex papers, and who had come to seem so much more remote since only the width of the Central Park divided mother and daughter from their Olympian portals. Mrs.
Why do they live with somebody else? Haven't they got the means to have a home of their own?" Undine's perceptions were more rapid, and she fixed her eyes searchingly on Mrs. Heeny. "Do you mean to say Mr. Marvell's as swell as Mr. Popple?" "As swell? Why, Claud Walsingham Popple ain't in the same class with him!"
Even now it seemed incredible that he should not turn out to be more distinguished than young Marvell: he seemed so much more in the key of the world she read about in the Sunday papers the dazzling auriferous world of the Van Degens, the Driscolls and their peers. She was roused by the sound in the hall of her mother's last words to Mrs. Heeny.
Undine waited till their adieux were over; then, opening her door, she seized the astonished masseuse and dragged her into the room. Mrs. Heeny gazed in admiration at the luminous apparition in whose hold she found herself. "Mercy, Undine you do look stunning! Are you trying on your dress for Mrs. Fairford's?" "Yes no this is only an old thing." The girl's eyes glittered under their black brows.
And it's more so in New York than anywhere. The wrong set's like fly-paper: once you're in it you can pull and pull, but you'll never get out of it again." Undine's mother heaved another and more helpless sigh. "I wish YOU'D tell Undine that, Mrs. Heeny." "Oh, I guess Undine's all right. A girl like her can afford to wait.
Some two months later than the date of young Marvell's midnight vigil, Mrs. Heeny, seated on a low chair at Undine's knee, gave the girl's left hand an approving pat as she laid aside her lapful of polishers. "There!
Heeny, adjusting the big tortoiseshell spectacles she had taken to wearing, and reading out in a slow chant that seemed to Paul to come out of some lost remoteness of his infancy. "'It is reported in London that the price paid by Mr. Elmer Moffatt for the celebrated Grey Boy is the largest sum ever given for a Vandyck. Since Mr.
"Them's old stones, Undine they've got a different look," she said, examining the ring while she rubbed her cushioned palm over the girl's brilliant finger-tips. "And the setting's quaint I wouldn't wonder but what it was one of old Gran'ma Dagonet's." Mrs. Spragg, hovering near in fond beatitude, looked up quickly. "Why, don't you s'pose he BOUGHT it for her, Mrs. Heeny?
Heeny had reported that Mrs. Marvell had other views for her son; and this was confirmed by such echoes of the short sharp struggle as reached the throbbing listeners at the Stentorian. But the conflict over, the air had immediately cleared, showing the enemy in the act of unconditional surrender. It surprised Undine that there had been no reprisals, no return on the points conceded.
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