"Why, you SAID you thought--" Mrs. Spragg began reproachfully; but Mrs.
Heeny, heedless of their bickerings, was pursuing her own train of
thought.

"What Popple? Claud Walsingham Popple--the portrait painter?"

"Yes--I suppose so. He said he'd like to paint me. Mabel Lipscomb
introduced him. I don't care if I never see him again," the girl said,
bathed in angry pink.

"Do you know him, Mrs. Heeny?" Mrs. Spragg enquired.

"I should say I did. I manicured him for his first society portrait--a
full-length of Mrs. Harmon B. Driscoll." Mrs. Heeny smiled indulgently
on her hearers. "I know everybody. If they don't know ME they ain't in
it, and Claud Walsingham Popple's in it. But he ain't nearly AS in it,"
she continued judicially, "as Ralph Marvell--the little fellow, as you
call him."

Undine Spragg, at the word, swept round on the speaker with one of the
quick turns that revealed her youthful flexibility. She was always
doubling and twisting on herself, and every movement she made seemed
to start at the nape of her neck, just below the lifted roll of
reddish-gold hair, and flow without a break through her whole slim
length to the tips of her fingers and the points of her slender restless
feet.

"Why, do you know the Marvells? Are THEY stylish?" she asked.