"Lipscomb? Lipscomb? What is Mr. Lipscomb's occupation?"
"He's a broker," said Undine, glad to be able to place her friend's husband in so handsome a light. The subtleties of a professional classification unknown to Apex had already taught her that in New York it is more distinguished to be a broker than a dentist; and she was surprised at Mr. Dagonet's lack of enthusiasm.
"Ah? A broker?" He said it almost as Popple might have said "A DENTIST?" and Undine found herself astray in a new labyrinth of social distinctions. She felt a sudden contempt for Harry Lipscomb, who had already struck her as too loud, and irrelevantly comic. "I guess Mabel'll get a divorce pretty soon," she added, desiring, for personal reasons, to present Mrs. Lipscomb as favourably as possible.
Mr. Dagonet's handsome eye-brows drew together. "A divorce? H'm—that's bad. Has he been misbehaving himself?"
Undine looked innocently surprised. "Oh, I guess not. They like each other well enough. But he's been a disappointment to her. He isn't in the right set, and I think Mabel realizes she'll never really get anywhere till she gets rid of him."
These words, uttered in the high fluting tone that she rose to when sure of her subject, fell on a pause which prolonged and deepened itself to receive them, while every face at the table, Ralph Marvell's excepted, reflected in varying degree Mr. Dagonet's pained astonishment.
"But, my dear young lady—what would your friend's situation be if, as you put it, she 'got rid' of her husband on so trivial a pretext?"
Undine, surprised at his dullness, tried to explain. "Oh that wouldn't be the reason GIVEN, of course. Any lawyer could fix it up for them. Don't they generally call it desertion?"
There was another, more palpitating, silence, broken by a laugh from
Ralph.
"RALPH!" his mother breathed; then, turning to Undine, she said with a constrained smile: "I believe in certain parts of the country such—unfortunate arrangements—are beginning to be tolerated. But in New York, in spite of our growing indifference, a divorced woman is still—thank heaven!—at a decided disadvantage."