The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton

Some two months later than the date of young Marvell's midnight vigil, Mrs. Heeny, seated on a low chair at Undine's knee, gave the girl's left hand an approving pat as she laid aside her lapful of polishers.

"There! I guess you can put your ring on again," she said with a laugh of jovial significance; and Undine, echoing the laugh in a murmur of complacency, slipped on the fourth finger of her recovered hand a band of sapphires in an intricate setting.

Mrs. Heeny took up the hand again. "Them's old stones, Undine -- they've got a different look," she said, examining the ring while she rubbed her cushioned palm over the girl's brilliant finger-tips. "And the setting's quaint -- I wouldn't wonder but what it was one of old Gran'ma Dagonet's."

Mrs. Spragg, hovering near in fond beatitude, looked up quickly.

"Why, don't you s'pose he BOUGHT it for her, Mrs. Heeny? It came in a Tiff'ny box."

The manicure laughed again. "Of course he's had Tiff'ny rub it up. Ain't you ever heard of ancestral jewels, Mrs. Spragg? In the Eu-ropean aristocracy they never go out and BUY engagement-rings; and Undine's marrying into our aristocracy."

Mrs. Spragg looked relieved. "Oh, I thought maybe they were trying to scrimp on the ring -- "

Mrs. Heeny, shrugging away this explanation, rose from her seat and rolled back her shiny black sleeves.

"Look at here, Undine, if you really want me to do your hair it's time we got to work."

The girl swung about in her seat so that she faced the mirror on the dressing-table. Her shoulders shone through transparencies of lace and muslin which slipped back as she lifted her arms to draw the tortoise-shell pins from her hair.

"Of course you've got to do it -- I want to look perfectly lovely!"

"Well -- I dunno's my hand's in nowadays," said Mrs. Heeny in a tone that belied the doubt she cast on her own ability.

"Oh, you're an ARTIST, Mrs. Heeny -- and I just couldn't have had that French maid 'round to-night," sighed Mrs. Spragg, sinking into a chair near the dressing-table.

Undine, with a backward toss of her head, scattered her loose locks about her. As they spread and sparkled under Mrs. Heeny's touch, Mrs. Spragg leaned back, drinking in through half-closed lids her daughter's loveliness. Some new quality seemed added to Undine's beauty: it had a milder bloom, a kind of melting grace, which might have been lent to it by the moisture in her mother's eyes.

"So you're to see the old gentleman for the first time at this dinner? " Mrs. Heeny pursued, sweeping the live strands up into a loosely woven crown.

"Yes. I'm frightened to death! " Undine, laughing confidently, took up a hand-glass and scrutinized the small brown mole above the curve of her upper lip.

"I guess she'll know how to talk to him," Mrs. Spragg averred with a kind of quavering triumph.

"She'll know how to LOOK at him, anyhow," said Mrs. Heeny; and Undine smiled at her own image.

"I hope he won't think I'm too awful!"

Mrs. Heeny laughed. "Did you read the description of yourself in the Radiator this morning? I wish't I'd 'a had time to cut it out. I guess I'll have to start a separate bag for YOUR clippings soon."