certain violent way she had of capturing attention, the victory remained
with Undine, whom Mabel pronounced more refined; and the discomfited
Indiana, denouncing her schoolmates as a "bunch of mushes," had
disappeared forever from the scene of her defeat.

Since then Mabel had returned to New York and married a stock-broker;
and Undine's first steps in social enlightenment dated from the day when
she had met Mrs. Harry Lipscomb, and been again taken under her wing.

Harry Lipscomb had insisted on investigating the riding-master's record,
and had found that his real name was Aaronson, and that he had left
Cracow under a charge of swindling servant-girls out of their savings;
in the light of which discoveries Undine noticed for the first time that
his lips were too red and that his hair was pommaded. That was one of
the episodes that sickened her as she looked back, and made her resolve
once more to trust less to her impulses--especially in the matter of
giving away rings. In the interval, however, she felt she had learned a
good deal, especially since, by Mabel Lipscomb's advice, the Spraggs had
moved to the Stentorian, where that lady was herself established.

There was nothing of the monopolist about Mabel, and she lost no time in
making Undine free of the Stentorian group and its affiliated branches:
a society addicted to "days," and linked together by membership in
countless clubs, mundane, cultural or "earnest." Mabel took Undine to
the days, and introduced her as a "guest" to the club-meetings, where
she was supported by the presence of many other guests--"my friend Miss
Stager, of Phalanx, Georgia," or (if the lady were literary) simply "my
friend Ora Prance Chettle of Nebraska--you know what Mrs. Chettle stands
for."