This solacing thought enabled Mrs. Spragg to yield herself unreservedly
to Mrs. Heeny's ministrations, which were prolonged for a happy
confidential hour; and she had just bidden the masseuse good-bye, and
was restoring the rings to her fingers, when the door opened to admit
her husband.

Mr. Spragg came in silently, setting his high hat down on the
centre-table, and laying his overcoat across one of the gilt chairs. He
was tallish, grey-bearded and somewhat stooping, with the slack figure
of the sedentary man who would be stout if he were not dyspeptic; and
his cautious grey eyes with pouch-like underlids had straight black
brows like his daughter's. His thin hair was worn a little too long over
his coat collar, and a Masonic emblem dangled from the heavy gold chain
which crossed his crumpled black waistcoat.

He stood still in the middle of the room, casting a slow pioneering
glance about its gilded void; then he said gently: "Well, mother?"

Mrs. Spragg remained seated, but her eyes dwelt on him affectionately.
"Undine's been asked out to a dinner-party; and Mrs. Heeny says it's to
one of the first families. It's the sister of one of the gentlemen that
Mabel Lipscomb introduced her to last night."

There was a mild triumph in her tone, for it was owing to her insistence
and Undine's that Mr. Spragg had been induced to give up the house
they had bought in West End Avenue, and move with his family to the
Stentorian. Undine had early decided that they could not hope to get
on while they "kept house"--all the fashionable people she knew either
boarded or lived in hotels. Mrs. Spragg was easily induced to take the