As for Mrs. Fairford, she had never seemed more brilliantly bent
on fusing the various elements under her hand. Undine had already
discovered that she adored her brother, and had guessed that this
would make her either a strong ally or a determined enemy. The latter
alternative, however, did not alarm the girl. She thought Mrs. Fairford
"bright," and wanted to be liked by her; and she was in the state of
dizzy self-assurance when it seemed easy to win any sympathy she chose
to seek.

For the only other guests--Mrs. Fairford's husband, and the elderly
Charles Bowen who seemed to be her special friend--Undine had no
attention to spare: they remained on a plane with the dim pictures
hanging at her back. She had expected a larger party; but she was
relieved, on the whole, that it was small enough to permit of her
dominating it. Not that she wished to do so by any loudness of
assertion. Her quickness in noting external differences had already
taught her to modulate and lower her voice, and to replace "The I-dea!"
and "I wouldn't wonder" by more polished locutions; and she had not been
ten minutes at table before she found that to seem very much in love,
and a little confused and subdued by the newness and intensity of the
sentiment, was, to the Dagonet mind, the becoming attitude for a young
lady in her situation. The part was not hard to play, for she WAS in
love, of course. It was pleasant, when she looked across the table, to
meet Ralph's grey eyes, with that new look in them, and to feel that she
had kindled it; but I it was only part of her larger pleasure in
the general homage to her beauty, in the sensations of interest and
curiosity excited by everything about her, from the family portraits
overhead to the old Dagonet silver on the table--which were to be hers
too, after all!