Undine had supposed that on her marriage one of the great suites of the Hotel
de Chelles would be emptied of its tenants and put at her husband's disposal;
but she had since learned that, even had such a plan occurred to her
parents-in-law, considerations of economy would have hindered it. The old
Marquis and his wife, who were content, when they came up from Burgundy in the
spring, with a modest set of rooms looking out on the court of their ancestral
residence, expected their son and his wife to fit themselves into the still
smaller apartment which had served as Raymond's bachelor lodging. The rest of
the fine old mouldering house--the tall-windowed premier on the garden, and the
whole of the floor above--had been let for years to old fashioned tenants who
would have been more surprised than their landlord had he suddenly proposed to
dispossess them. Undine, at first, had regarded these arrangements as merely
provisional. She was persuaded that, under her influence, Raymond would soon
convert his parents to more modern ideas, and meanwhile she was still in the
flush of a completer well-being than she had ever known, and disposed, for the
moment, to make light of any inconveniences connected with it. The three months
since her marriage had been more nearly like what she had dreamed of than any of
her previous experiments in happiness. At last she had what she wanted, and for
the first time the glow of triumph was warmed by a deeper feeling. Her husband
was really charming (it was odd how he reminded her of Ralph!), and after her
bitter two years of loneliness and humiliation it was delicious to find herself
once more adored and protected.
The very fact that Raymond was more jealous of her than Ralph had ever
been--or at any rate less reluctant to show it--gave her a keener sense of
recovered power. None of the men who had been in love with her before had been
so frankly possessive, or so eager for reciprocal assurances of constancy. She
knew that Ralph had suffered deeply from her intimacy with Van Degen, but he had
betrayed his feeling only by a more studied detachment; and Van Degen, from the
first, had been contemptuously indifferent to what she did or felt when she was
out of his sight. As to her earlier experiences, she had frankly forgotten them:
her sentimental memories went back no farther than the beginning of her New York
career.
Raymond seemed to attach more importance to love, in all its manifestations,
than was usual or convenient in a husband; and she gradually began to be aware
that her domination over him involved a corresponding loss of independence.
Since their return to Paris she had found that she was expected to give a
circumstantial report of every hour she spent away from him. She had nothing to
hide, and no designs against his peace of mind except those connected with her
frequent and costly sessions at the dress-makers'; but she had never before been
called upon to account to any one for the use of her time, and after the first
amused surprise at Raymond's always wanting to know where she had been and whom
she had seen she began to be oppressed by so exacting a devotion. Her parents,
from her tenderest youth, had tacitly recognized her inalienable right to "go
round," and Ralph--though from motives which she divined to be different--had
shown the same respect for her freedom. It was therefore disconcerting to find
that Raymond expected her to choose her friends, and even her acquaintances, in
conformity not only with his personal tastes but with a definite and complicated
code of family prejudices and traditions; and she was especially surprised to
discover that he viewed with disapproval her intimacy with the Princess
Estradina.
"My cousin's extremely amusing, of course, but utterly mad and very mal
entouree. Most of the people she has about her ought to be in prison or Bedlam:
especially that unspeakable Madame Adelschein, who's a candidate for both. My
aunt's an angel, but she's been weak enough to let Lili turn the Hotel de
Dordogne into an annex of Montmartre. Of course you'll have to show yourself
there now and then: in these days families like ours must hold together. But go
to the reunions de famille rather than to Lili's intimate parties; go with me,
or with my mother; don't let yourself be seen there alone. You're too young and
good-looking to be mixed up with that crew. A woman's classed--or rather
unclassed--by being known as one of Lili's set."
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