Edith Wharton

“ As Undine listened, a new thought shaped itself. She could not continue to wear the pearls: the idea had become intolerable. But for the first time she saw what they might be converted into, and what they might rescue her from; and suddenly she brought out: "Do you suppose I could get anything for them?"
"Get anything? Why, what--"
"Anything like what they're worth, I mean. They cost a lot of money: they came from the biggest place in Paris." Under Mrs. Heeny's simplifying eye it was comparatively easy to make these explanations. ”

“ Her evening at the opera had shown her the impossibility of remaining in New York. She had neither the skill nor the power to fight the forces of indifference leagued against her: she must get away at once, and try to make a fresh start. But, as usual, the lack of money hampered her. Mr. Spragg could no longer afford to make her the allowance she had intermittently received from him during the first years of her marriage, and since she was now without child or household she could hardly make it a grievance that he had reduced her income. ”

“ Mrs. Spragg's long habit of apathy was overcome by her dread of being left alone when her husband and Undine went out, and she delayed and impeded their expeditions by insisting on accompanying them; so that, much as Undine disliked sightseeing, there seemed no alternative between "going round" with her parents and shutting herself up with them in the crowded hotels to which she successively transported them.
The hotels were the only European institutions that really interested Mr. Spragg. He considered them manifestly inferior to those at home ”

“ Spragg's irony. He wanted to know what she expected to do with him when she got him there; whether she meant to introduce him to "all those old Kings," how she thought he and her mother would look in court dress, and how she supposed he was going to get on without his New York paper. But Undine had been aware of having what he himself would have called "a pull" over her father since, the day after their visit to the opera, he had taken her aside to ask: "You sent back those pearls?" and she had answered coldly: "Mrs. Heeny's taken them." ”

“ Her parents' diminished means and her own uncertain future made her regard the care of Paul as an additional burden, and she quieted her scruples by thinking of him as "better off" with Ralph's family, and of herself as rather touchingly disinterested in putting his welfare before her own. Poor Mrs. Spragg was pining for him, but Undine rejected her artless suggestion that Mrs. Heeny should be sent to "bring him round." "I wouldn't ask them a favour for the world--they're just waiting for a chance to be hateful to me," she scornfully declared ”

“ That porter at Lucerne told me the Germans slept three in a room--well, call it eight hundred people; and three meals a day per head; no, four meals, with that afternoon tea they take; and the last place we were at--'way up on that mountain there--why, there were seventy-five hotels in that one spot alone, and all jam full--well, it beats me to know where all the people come from... ”

“ Chauncey Elling, plumed and purple, stared, parted her lips, and turned to say something important to young Jim Driscoll, who looked up involuntarily and then squared his shoulders and gazed fixedly at a distant point, as people do at a funeral. Behind them Undine caught sight of Clare Van Degen; she stood alone, and her face was pale and listless. "Shall I go up and speak to her?" Undine wondered. Some intuition told her that, alone of all the women present, Clare might have greeted her kindly ”