The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton

could be no call to rescue young ladies so secured from the perils of reality! Undine had no such traditional safeguards – Ralph guessed Mrs Spragg’s opinions to be as fluid as her daughter’s and the girl’s very sensitiveness to new impressions, combined with her obvious lack of any sense of relative values, would make her an easy prey to the powers of folly. He seemed to see her as he sat there, pressing his fists into histemples – he seemed to see her like a lovely rock-bound Andromeda, with the devouring monster Society careering up to make a mouthful of her; and himself whirling down on his winged horse – just Pegasus turned Rosinante for the nonce – to cut her bonds, snatch her up, and whirl her back into the blue …

VII
    S OME 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! I guess you can put your ring on again,’ she said with a laugh of jovial significance; and Undine, echoing the laugh in a murmur of complacency, slipped on the fourth finger of her recovered hand a band of sapphires in an intricate setting.
    Mrs Heeny took up the hand again. ‘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? It came in a Tiff’ny box.’
    The manicure laughed again. ‘Of course he’s had Tiff’ny rub it up. Ain’t you ever heard of ancestral jewels, Mrs Spragg? In the Eu-ropean aristocracy they never go out and
buy
engagement-rings; and Undine’s marrying into our aristocracy.’
    Mrs Spragg looked relieved. ‘Oh, I thought maybe they were trying to scrimp on the ring –’
    Mrs Heeny, shrugging away this explanation, rose from her seat and rolled back her shiny black sleeves.
    ‘Look at here, Undine, if you really want me to do your hair it’s time we got to work.’
    The girl swung about in her seat so that she faced the mirror on the dressing-table. Her shoulders shone through transparencies of lace and muslin which slipped back as she lifted her arms to draw the tortoise-shell pins from her hair.
    ‘Of course you’ve got to do it – I want to look perfectly lovely!’
    ‘Well – I dunno’s my hand’s in nowadays,’ said Mrs Heeny in a tone that belied the doubt she cast on her own ability.
    ‘Oh, you’re an
artist
, Mrs Heeny – and I just couldn’t have had that French maid ’round tonight,’ sighed Mrs Spragg, sinking into a chair near the dressing-table.
    Undine, with a backward toss of her head, scattered her loose locks about her. As they spread and sparkled under Mrs Heeny’s touch, Mrs Spragg leaned back, drinking in through half-closed lids her daughter’s loveliness. Some new quality seemed added to Undine’s beauty: it had a milder bloom, a kind of melting grace, which might have been lent to it by the moisture in her mother’s eyes.
    ‘So you’re to see the old gentleman for the first time at this dinner?’ Mrs Heeny pursued, sweeping the live strands up into a loosely woven crown.
    ‘Yes. I’m frightened to death!’ Undine, laughing confidently, took up a hand-glass and scrutinized the small brown mole above the curve of her upper lip.
    ‘I guess she’ll know how to talk to him,’ Mrs Spragg averred with a kind of quavering triumph.
    ‘She’ll know how to
look
at him, anyhow,’ said Mrs Heeny; and Undine smiled at her own image.
    ‘I hope he won’t think I’m too awful!’
    Mrs Heeny laughed. ‘Did you read the description of yourself in the
Radiator
this morning? I wish’t I’d ’a had time to cut it out. I guess I’ll have to