actually unaware of her existence. Listless, long-faced, supercilious,
the young lady from Washington sat apart reading novels or playing
solitaire with her parents, as though the huge hotel's loud life of
gossip and flirtation were invisible and inaudible to her. Undine never
even succeeded in catching her eye: she always lowered it to her book
when the Apex beauty trailed or rattled past her secluded corner. But
one day an acquaintance of the Winchers' turned up--a lady from Boston,
who had come to Virginia on a botanizing tour; and from scraps of Miss
Wincher's conversation with the newcomer, Undine, straining her ears
behind a column of the long veranda, obtained a new glimpse into the
unimagined.

The Winchers, it appeared, found themselves at Potash Springs merely
because a severe illness of Mrs. Wincher's had made it impossible, at
the last moment, to move her farther from Washington. They had let their
house on the North Shore, and as soon as they could leave "this dreadful
hole" were going to Europe for the autumn. Miss Wincher simply didn't
know how she got through the days; though no doubt it was as good as
a rest-cure after the rush of the winter. Of course they would have
preferred to hire a house, but the "hole," if one could believe it,
didn't offer one; so they had simply shut themselves off as best
they could from the "hotel crew"--had her friend, Miss Wincher
parenthetically asked, happened to notice the Sunday young men? They
were queerer even than the "belles" they came for--and had escaped the
promiscuity of the dinner-hour by turning one of their rooms into a
dining-room, and picnicking there--with the Persimmon House standards,
one couldn't describe it in any other way! But luckily the awful place
was doing mamma good, and now they had nearly served their term...

Undine turned sick as she listened. Only the evening before she had