m, they appeared to have
been composed of an interminable succession of identical days, in which
attendance at early mass (in the coroneted gallery she had once so
glowingly depicted to Van Degen) was followed by a great deal of
conversational sitting about, a great deal of excellent eating, an
occasional drive to the nearest town behind a pair of heavy draft
horses, and long evenings in a lamp-heated drawing-room with all the
windows shut, and the stout cure making an asthmatic fourth at the
Marquise's card-table.

Still, even these conditions were not permanent, and the discipline of
the last years had trained Undine to wait and dissemble. The summer
over, it was decided--after a protracted family conclave--that the
state of the old Marquise's health made it advisable for her to spend
the winter with the married daughter who lived near Pau. The other
members of the family returned to their respective estates, and Undine
once more found herself alone with her husband. But she knew by this
time that there was to be no thought of Paris that winter, or even the
next spring. Worse still, she was presently to discover that Raymond's
accession of rank brought with it no financial advantages.

Having but the vaguest notion of French testamentary law, she was
dismayed to learn that the compulsory division of property made it
impossible for a father to benefit his eldest son at the expense of the
others. Raymond was therefore little richer than before, and with the
debts of honour of a troublesome younger brother to settle, and Saint
Desert to keep up, his available income was actually reduced. He held
out, indeed, the hope of eventual improvement, since the old Marquis had
managed his estates with a lofty contempt for modern methods, and the
application of new principles of agriculture and forestry were certain
to yield profitable results. But for a year or two, at any rate, this
very change of treatment would necessitate the owner's continual
supervision, and would not in the meanwhile produce any increase of
income.

To faire valoir the family acres had always, it appeared, been Raymond's
deepest-seated purpose, and all his frivolities dropped from him with
the prospect of putting his hand to the plough. He was not, indeed,
inhuman enough to condemn his wife to perpetual exile. He meant, he
assured her, that she should have her annual spring visit to Paris--but
he stared in dismay at her suggestion that they should take p