There was no message from her father, and a reaction of disgust set in.
Of what good were such encounters if they were to have no sequel? She
would probably never meet Peter Van Degen again--or, if she DID run
across him in the same accidental way, she knew they could not continue
their conversation without being "introduced." What was the use of being
beautiful and attracting attention if one were perpetually doomed to
relapse again into the obscure mass of the Uninvited?

Her gloom was not lightened by finding Ralph Marvell's card on the
drawing-room table. She thought it unflattering and almost impolite of
him to call without making an appointment: it seemed to show that he
did not wish to continue their acquaintance. But as she tossed the card
aside her mother said: "He was real sorry not to see you. Undine--he sat
here nearly an hour."

Undine's attention was roused. "Sat here--all alone? Didn't you tell him
I was out?"

"Yes--but he came up all the same. He asked for me."

"Asked for YOU?"

The social order seemed to be falling in ruins at Undine's feet. A
visitor who asked for a girl's mother!--she stared at Mrs. Spragg with
cold incredulity. "What makes you think he did?"

"Why, they told me so. I telephoned down that you were out, and they
said he'd asked for me." Mrs. Spragg let the fact speak for itself--it
was too much out of the range of her experience to admit of even a
hypothetical explanation.