Chapter 1 On a January evening of the early seventies Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York. Though there was already talk of the erection, in a remote metropolitan distance above the forties, of a new opera house which should compete in costliness and splendor with those of the great European capitals, the world of fashion was still content to reassemble every winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the sociable old academy. Conservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out the new people whom New York was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to, and the sentimental clung to it for its historic associations, and the musical for its excellent acoustics, always so problematic a quality in halls built for the hearing of music. It was Madame Nilsson's first appearance that winter, and what the Daily Press had already learned to describe as an exceptionally brilliant audience had gathered to hear her, transported through the slippery, snowy streets and private bromes, in the spacious family landow, or in the humbler but more convenient, brown coupé. To come to the opera in a brown coupé was almost as honourable a way of arriving as in one's own carriage, and departure by the same means had the immense advantage of enabling one, with a playful allusion to democratic principles, to scramble into the first brown conveyance in the line, instead of waiting till the cold and gin-congested nose of one's own coachman gleamed under the portico of the academy. It was one of the great livery-stablemen's most masterly intuitions to have discovered that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it. When Newland Archer opened the door at the back of the club-box, the curtain had just gone up on the garden scene. There was no reason why the young man should not have come earlier, for he had dined at seven, alone with his mother and sister, and had lingered afterward over a cigar in the gothic library, with glazed black walnut bookcases and finial-topped chairs, which was the only room in the house where Mrs. Archer allowed smoking. But in the first place, New York was a metropolis, and perfectly aware that in metropolises it was not the thing to arrive early at the opera, played a part as important in Newland Archer's New York as the inscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his forefathers thousands of years ago. The second reason for his delay was a personal one. He had dawdled over his cigar because he was at heart a dilettante, and thinking over a pleasure to come often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its realization. This was especially the case when the pleasure was a delicate one, as his pleasures mostly were, and on this occasion the moment he looked forward to was so rare and exquisite in quality that, well, if he had timed his arrival in accord with the prima donna stage manager, he could not have entered the academy at a more significant moment than just as she was singing, He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, He Loves Me—and sprinkling the falling daisy petals with notes as clear as dew. She sang, of course, Mamma, and not, He Loves Me, since an unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clear understanding of English-speaking audiences. This seemed as natural to Newland Archer as all the other conventions on which his life was molded, such as the duty of using two silver-backed brushes with his monogram and blue enamel to part his hair, and of never appearing in a society without a flower, preferably a gardenia, in his buttonhole. Mamma, non-mamma, the prima donna sang, and Mamma, with a final burst of love triumphant, as she pressed the dishevelled daisy to her lips and lifted her large eyes to the sophisticated countenance of the little-brown Faust Capool, who was vainly trying in a tight purple velvet doublet and plumed cap to look as pure and true as his artless victim. Newland Archer, leaning against the wall at the back of the club-box, turned his eyes from the stage and scanned the opposite side of the house. Directly facing him was the box of old Mrs. Manson Mingott, whose monstrous obesity had long since made it impossible for her to attend the opera, but it was always represented on fashionable nights by some of the younger members of the family. On this occasion the front of the box was filled by her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Lovell Mingott, and her daughter, Mrs. Welland, and slightly withdrawn behind these brocaded matrons, sat a young girl in white, with eyes ecstatically fixed on stage-lovers. As Madame Nilsons, Mamma, thrilled out above the silent house, the box is always stopped talking during the daisy song. A warm pink mounted to the girl's cheek, mantled her brow to the roots of her fair braids, and suffused the young slope of her breast to the line where it met a modest tool-tucker fastened with a single gardenia. She dropped her eyes to the immense bouquet of lilies of the valley on her knee, and Newland Archer saw her white-gloved fingertips touch the flowers softly.  No expense had been spared on the setting, which was acknowledged to be very beautiful even by people who shared his acquaintance with the opera-houses of Paris and Vienna. The foreground, to the footlights, was covered with emerald green cloth. In the middle distance, symmetrical mounds of woolly green moss, bounded by croquet hoops, formed the base of shrubs shaped like orange trees, but studded with large pink and red roses. Gigantic pansies, considerably larger than the roses, and closely resembling the floral pen wipers made by female parishioners for fashionable clergymen, sprang from the moss beneath the rose-trees, and here and there a daisy grafted on a rose-branch, flowered with a luxuriance prophetic of Mr. Luther Burbank's far-off prodigies. In the centre of this enchanted garden, Madame Nielsen, in white cashmere slashed with pale blue satin, a reticule dangling from a blue girdle and large yellow braids carefully disposed on each side of her muslin chemisette, listened with downcast eyes to Monsieur Cappool's impassioned wooing, and affected a guileless incomprehension of his designs whenever, by word or glance, he persuasively indicated the ground floor window of the neat brick villa projecting obliquely from the right wing. The darling, thought Nuland Archer, his glance splitting back to the young girl with the lilies of the valley, she doesn't even guess what it's all about. And he contemplated her absorbed young face with the thrill of possessorship, in which pride in his own masculine initiation was mingled with a tender reverence for her abysmal purity. We'll read Faust together, by the Italian lakes, he thought, somewhat hazily confusing the scene of his projected honeymoon with the masterpieces of literature which it would be his manly privilege to reveal to his bride. It was only that afternoon that May Welland had let him guess that she cared—New York's consecrated phrase of maiden of vowel—and already his imagination, leaping ahead of the engagement ring, the betrothal kiss and the march from Lowengren pictured her at his side in some scene of old European witchery. He did not in the least wish the future Mrs. Nuland Archer to be a simpleton. He meant her, thanks to his enlightening companionship, to develop a social tact and readiness of wit, enabling her to hold her own with the most popular married women of the younger set, in which it was the recognized custom to attract masculine homage while playfully discouraging it. If he had probed to the bottom of his vanity, as he sometimes nearly did, he would have found there the wish that his wife should be as worldly wise and as eager to please as the married lady whose charms had held his fancy through two mildly agitated years, without, of course, any hint of the frailty which had so nearly marred that unhappy being's life and had disarranged his own plans for a whole winter. How this miracle of fire and ice was to be created, and to sustain itself in a harsh world, he had never taken the time to think out. But he was content to hold his view without analyzing it, since he knew it was that of all the carefully brushed white waist-coated, buttonhole-flowered gentlemen who succeeded each other in the club-box, exchanging friendly greetings with him, and turned their opera glasses critically on the circle of ladies who were the product of the system. In matters intellectual and artistic, Newland Archer felt himself distinctly the superior of these chosen specimens of old New York gentility. He had probably read more, thought more, and even seen a good deal more of the world than any other man of the number. Singly they betrayed their inferiority, but grouped together they represented New York, and the habit of masculine solidarity made him accept their doctrine on all the issues called moral. He instinctively felt that in this respect it would be troublesome, and also rather bad form, to strike out for himself. Well upon my soul! exclaimed Lawrence Lefferts, turning his opera glass abruptly away from the stage. Lawrence Lefferts was, on the whole, the foremost authority on form in New York. He had probably devoted more time than anyone else to the study of this intricate and fascinating question, but study alone could not account for his complete and easy competence. One had only to look at him, from the slant of his bald forehead and the curve of his beautiful fair mustache, to the long patent leather feet at the other end of his lean and elegant person, to feel that the knowledge of form must be congenital in anyone who knew how to wear such good clothes so carelessly, and carry such height with so much lounging grace. As a young admirer had once said of him, if anybody can tell a fellow just went to wear a black tie with evening clothes and went not to, it's Larry Lefferts, and on the question of pumps versus patent leather oxfords his authority had never been disputed. My God! he said, and silently handed his glass to old Sillerton Jackson. Newland Archer, following Leffert's glance, saw with surprise that his exclamation had been occasioned by the entry of a new figure into old Mrs. Mingott's box. It was that of a slim young woman, a little less tall than May Welland, with brown hair growing in close curls about her temples, and held in place by a narrow band of diamonds. The suggestion of this headdress, which gave her what was then called a Josephine look, was carried out in the cut of the dark blue velvet gown, rather theatrically caught up under her bosom by a girdle with a large old-fashioned clasp. The wearer of this unusual dress, who seemed quite unconscious of the attention it was attracting, stood a moment in the centre of the box, discussing with Mrs. Welland the propriety of taking the latter's place in the front right-hand corner, then she yielded with a slight smile, and seated herself in line with Mrs. Welland's sister-in-law, Mrs. Lovell Mingott, who was installed in the opposite corner. Mr. Sillerton Jackson had returned the opera glass to Laurence Lefferts. The whole of the club turned instinctively, waiting to hear what the old man had to say, for old Mr. Jackson was as great an authority on family as Laurence Lefferts was on form. He knew all the ramifications of New York's cousinships, and could not only elucidate such complicated questions as that of the connection between the Mingott's, through the Thorleys, with the Dallas's of South Carolina, and that of the relationship of the elder branch of Philadelphia Thorleys to the Albany Chiverses, on no account to be confused with the Manson Chiverses of University Place, but could also enumerate the leading characteristics of each family, as, for instance, the fabulous stinginess of the younger line of Lefferts's, the Long Island ones, or the fatal tendency of the Rushworths to make foolish matches, or the insanity recurring in every second generation of the Albany Chiverses, with whom their New York cousins had always refused to intermarry, with the disastrous exception of poor Medora Manson, who, as everybody knew, but then her mother was a Rushworth. In addition to this forest of family trees, Mr. Sillerton Jackson carried between his narrow hollow temples, and under his soft thatch of silver hair, a register of most of the scandals and mysteries that had smouldered under the unruffled surface of New York society within the last fifty years. So far indeed it is information extend, and so acutely retentive was his memory, that he was supposed to be the only man who could have told you who Julius Beaufort, the banker, really was, and what had become of Hanson Bob Spicer, old Mrs. Manson Mingott's father, who had disappeared so mysteriously, with a large sum of trust money, less than a year after his marriage, on the very day that a beautiful Spanish dancer who had been delighting thronged audiences in the old opera house on the battery had taken ship for Cuba. But these mysteries, and many others, were closely locked in Mr. Jackson's breast, for not only did his keen sense of honour forbid his repeating anything privately imparted, but he was fully aware that his reputation for discretion increased his opportunities of finding out what he wanted to know. The club box, therefore, waited in visible suspense while Mr. Sillerton Jackson handed back Lawrence Leffert's opera glass. For a moment he silently scrutinised the attentive group out of his filmy blue eyes overhung by old veined lids. Then he gave his moustache a thoughtful twist, and said simply, I didn't think the Mingott's would have tried it on. The Age of Innocence Newland Archer, during this brief episode, had been thrown into a strange state of embarrassment. It was annoying that the box, which was thus attracting the undivided attention of masculine New York, should be that in which his betrothed was seated between her mother and aunt, and for a moment he could not identify the lady in the empire dress, nor imagine why her presence created such excitement among the initiated. Then light dawned on him, and with it came a momentary rush of indignation. No indeed, no one would have thought the Mingott's would have tried it on. But they had, they undoubtedly had, for the low-toned comments behind him left no doubt in Archer's mind that the young woman was May Welland's cousin, the cousin always referred to in the family as Poor Ellen Olenska. Archer knew that she had suddenly arrived from Europe a day or two previously. He had even heard from Miss Welland, not disapprovingly, that she had been to see Poor Ellen, who was staying with Old Mrs. Mingott. Archer entirely approved of family solidarity, and one of the qualities he most admired in the Mingott's was their resolute championship of the few black sheep that their blameless stock had produced. There was nothing mean or ungenerous in the young man's heart, and he was glad that his future wife should not be restrained by false prudery from being kind, in private, to her unhappy cousin. But to receive Countess Olenska in the family's circle was a different thing from producing her in public, at the opera of all places, and in the very box with the young girl whose engagement to him, Newland Archer, was to be announced within a few weeks. No! He felt, as Old Sillerton Jackson felt, he did not think the Mingott's would have tried it on. He knew, of course, that whatever man dared, within Fifth Avenue's limits, that old Mrs. Manson Mingott the matriarch of the line would dare. He had always admired the high and mighty old lady, who in spite of having been only Catherine Spicer of Staten Island, with a father mysteriously discredited, and neither money nor position enough to make people forget it, had allied herself with the head of the wealthy Mingott line, married two of her daughters to foreigners—an Italian marquee and an English banker—and put the crowning touch to her audacities by building a large house of pale, cream-coloured stone, when brown sandstone seemed as much the only wear as a frockcoat in the afternoon, in an inaccessible wilderness near the Central Park. Old Mrs. Mingott's foreign daughters had become a legend. They never came back to see their mother, and the latter being, like many persons of active mind and dominating will, sedentary and corpulent in her habit, had philosophically remained at home. But the cream-coloured house, supposed to be modelled on the private hotels of the Parisian aristocracy, was there as a visible proof of her moral courage, and she thrown in it, among pre-revolutionary furniture and souvenirs of the Tuileries of Louis-Napoléon, where she had shown in her middle age, as placidly as if there were nothing peculiar in living above thirty-fourth Street, or in having French windows that opened like doors instead of sashes that pulled up. Every one, including Mr. Sillerton Jackson, was agreed that old Catherine had never had beauty—a gift which, in the eyes of New York, justified every success, and excused a certain number of failings. Unkind people said that, like her imperial namesake, she had won her way to success by strength of will and hardness of heart, and a kind of haughty effrontery that was somehow justified by the extreme decency and dignity of her private life. Mr. Manson Mingott had died when she was only twenty-eight, and had tied up the money with an additional caution born of the general distrust of the spices. But his bold young widow went her way fearlessly, mingled freely in foreign society, married her daughters in heaven knew what corrupt in fashionable circles, hobnobbed with dukes and ambassadors, associated familiarly with papists, entertained opera singers, and was the intimate friend of Madame Taglioni. On all the while, as Sillerton Jackson was the first to proclaim, there had never been a breath on her reputation—the only respect, he always added, in which she differed from the earlier Catherine. Mrs. Manson Mingott had long since succeeded in untying her husband's fortune, and had lived in affluence for half a century. But memories of her early straits had made her excessively thrifty, and though when she bought a dress or a piece of furniture she took care that it should be of the best, she could not bring herself to spend much on the transient pleasures of the table. Therefore, for totally different reasons, her food was as poor as Mrs. Archer's, and her wines did nothing to redeem it. Her relatives considered that the penery of her table discredited the Mingott name, which had always been associated with good living. But people continued to come to her in spite of the made dishes and flat champagne, and in reply to the remonstrance of her son Lovell, who tried to retrieve the family credit by having the best chef in New York, she used to say, laughingly, What's the use of two good cooks in one family, now that I've married the girls and can't eat sauces? Newland Archer, as he mused on these things, had once more turned his eyes toward the Mingott box. He saw that Mrs. Welland and her sister-in-law were facing their semicircle of critics with the Mingottian aplomb which old Catherine had inculcated in all her tribe, and that only May Welland betrayed, by a heightened color, perhaps due to the knowledge that he was watching her, a sense of the gravity of the situation. As for the cause of the commotion, she sat gracefully in her corner of the box, her eyes fixed on the stage, and revealing, as she leaned forward, a little more shoulder and bosom than New York was accustomed to seeing, at least in ladies who had reasons for wishing to pass unnoticed. Few things seemed to Newland Archer more awful than an offense against taste, that far-off divinity of whom form was the mere visible representative and vice-regent. Madame Olenska's pale and serious face appealed to his fancy as suited to the occasion and to her unhappy situation, but the way her dress, which had no tucker, sloped away from her thin shoulders, shocked and troubled him. He hated to think of May Welland's being exposed to the influence of a young woman so careless of the dictates of taste. After all—he heard one of the younger men begin behind him, everybody talked through the Mephistopheles and Marthesines—after all, just what happened? Well, she left him. Nobody attempts to deny that. He's an awful brute, isn't he? Continued the young inquirer, a candid Thorly, who was evidently preparing to enter the lists as the lady's champion. The very worst, I knew him at Nice! said Lawrence Lufferts with authority. A half-paralysed, white, sneering fellow—rather handsome head, but eyes with a lot of lashes. Well, I'll tell you the sort. When he wasn't with women he was collecting China, paying any price for both, I understand. There was a general laugh, and the young champion said, well, then? Well, then, she bolted with his secretary. Oh, I see. The champion's face fell. It didn't last long, though. I heard of her a few months later living alone in Venice. I believe Lovell Mingott went out to get her. He said she was desperately unhappy. That's all right, but this parading her at the opera is another thing. Perhaps, young Thorly hazarded, she's too unhappy to be left at home. This was greeted with an irreverent laugh, and the youth blushed deeply, and tried to look as if he had meant to insinuate what knowing people called a double entendre. Well, it's queer to have brought Miss Welland anyhow, some one said in a low tone, with a side glance at Archer. Oh, that's part of the campaign! Granny's order's no doubt. Lufferts laughed. When the old lady does a thing, she does it Thorly. The act was ending, and there was a general stir in the box. Suddenly Newland Archer felt himself impelled to decisive action. The desire to be the first man to enter Mrs. Mingott's box, to proclaim to the waiting world his engagement to May Welland, and to see her through whatever difficulties her cousin's anomalous situation might involve her in, this impulse had abruptly overruled all scruples and hesitations, and sent him hurrying through the red corridors to the farther side of the house. As he entered the box, his eyes met Miss Welland's, and he saw that she had instantly understood his motive, though the family dignity which both considered so high a virtue would not permit her to tell him so. The persons of their world lived in an atmosphere of faint implications and pale delicacies, and the fact that he and she understood each other without a word seemed to the young man to bring them nearer than any explanation would have done. Her eyes said, You see why Mamma brought me. And it is answered. I would not for the world have had you stay away. You know my niece, Countess Olenska. Mrs. Welland inquired as she shook hands with her future son-in-law. Archer bowed without extending his hand, as was the custom on being introduced to a lady, and Ellen Olenska bent her head slightly, keeping her own pale-gloved hands clasped on her huge fan of eagle feathers. Having greeted Mrs. Lovell-Mingott, a large blonde lady in creaking satin, he sat down beside his betrothed, and said in a low tone, I hope you've told Madame Olenska that we're engaged. I want everybody to know. I want you to let me announce it this evening at the ball.  If you can persuade Mamma, she said. But why should we change what is already settled? He made no answer but that which his eyes returned, and she added, still more confidently smiling, Tell my cousin yourself, I give you leave. She says she used to play with you when you were children. She made way for him by pushing back her chair, and promptly, and a little ostentatiously, with the desire that the whole house should see what he was doing, Archer seated himself at the Countess Olenska's side. We did used to play together, didn't we? She asked, turning her grave eyes to his. You were a horrid boy, and kissed me once behind a door. But it was your cousin, Vandy Newland, who never looked at me that I was in love with. Her glance swept the horseshoe curve of boxes. Ah, how this brings it all back to me! I see everybody here in knickerbockers and pantalettes, she said, with her trailing slightly foreign accent, her eyes returning to his face. Agreeable as their expression was, the young man was shocked that they should reflect so unseemly a picture of the august tribunal before which, at that very moment, her case was being tried. Nothing can be in worse taste than misplaced flippancy, and he answered somewhat stiffly, Yes, you have been away a very long time. Oh, centuries and centuries! So long, she said, that I am sure I am dead and buried, And this dear old place is heaven. Which, for reasons he could not define, struck Newland Archer as an even more disrespectful way of describing New York society. It invariably happened in the same way. Mrs. Julius Beaufort, on the night of her annual ball, never failed to appear at the opera. Indeed, she always gave her ball on an opera night in order to emphasize her complete superiority to household cares, and her possession of a staff of servants competent to organize every detail of the entertainment in her absence. The Beaufort's house was one of the few in New York that possessed a ballroom. It's anti-dated, even Mrs. Manson Mingott's and the Headley Chivers'—and at a time, when it was beginning to be thought provincial, to put a crash over the drawing-room floor, and move the furniture upstairs—the possession of a ballroom that was used for no other purpose, and left for three hundred and sixty-four days of the year to shutter darkness with its gilt chairs stacked in a corner and its chandelier in a bag—this undoubted superiority was felt to compensate for whatever was regrettable in the Beaufort past. Mrs. Archer, who was fond of coining her social philosophy into axioms, had once said, We all have our pet common people. And though the phrase was a daring one, its truth was secretly admitted in many an exclusive bosom. But the Beaufort's were not exactly common—some people said they were even worse. Mrs. Beaufort belonged, indeed, to one of America's most honoured families. She had been the lovely Regina Dallas—of the South Carolina branch—a penniless beauty introduced to New York society by her cousin, the imprudent Medora Manson, who was always doing the wrong thing from the right motive. When one was related to the Mansons and the Rushworths, one had a doua de cité—as Mr. Sillerton Jackson, who had frequented the Tuileries, called it—in New York society, but did one not forfeit it in marrying Julius Beaufort? The question was, who was Beaufort? He passed, for an Englishman, was agreeable, handsome, ill-tempered, hospitable, and witty. He had come to America with letters of recommendation from old Mrs. Manson Mingott's English son-in-law, the banker, and had speedily made himself an important position in the world of affairs. But his habits were dissipated, his tongue was bitter, his antecedents were mysterious, and when Medora Manson announced her cousin's engagement to him, it was felt to be one more act of folly in poor Medora's long record of imprudences. But folly is as often justified of her children as wisdom, and two years after young Mrs. Beaufort's marriage it was admitted that she had the most distinguished house in New York. No one knew exactly how the miracle was accomplished. She was indolent, passive, the caustic even called her dull, but dressed like an idol, hung with pearls, growing younger and blonder and more beautiful each year, she throned in Mr. Beaufort's heavy brownstone palace, and drew all the world there without lifting her jeweled little finger. The knowing people said it was Beaufort himself who trained the servants, taught the chef new dishes, told the gardeners what hot-house flowers to grow for the dinner-table and the drawing-rooms, selected the guests, brewed the after-dinner punch, and dictated the little notes his wife wrote to her friends. If he did, these domestic activities were privately performed, and he presented to the world the appearance of a careless and hospitable millionaire strolling into his own drawing-room with the detachment of an invited guest, and saying, My wife's gloxinnias are a marvel, aren't they? I believe she gets them out from queue. Mr. Beaufort's secret, people were agreed, was the way he carried things off. It was all very well to whisper that he had been helped to leave England by the international banking house in which he had been employed. He carried off that rumour as easily as the rest, though New York's business conscience was no less sensitive than its moral standard. He carried everything before him, and all New York into his drawing-rooms, and for over twenty years now people had said they were going to the Beauforts, with the same tone of security as if they had said they were going to Mrs. Manson-Mingott's, and with the added satisfaction of knowing they would get hot canvas-backed ducks and vintage wines, instead of tepid veuve-clicot without a year, and warmed up croquettes from Philadelphia. Mrs. Beaufort then had, as usual, appeared in her box just before the jewel-song, and when, again as usual, she rose at the end of the third act, drew her opera cloak about her lovely shoulders, and disappeared, New York knew that meant that half an hour later the ball would begin. The Beaufort house was one that New Yorkers were proud to show to foreigners, especially on the night of the annual ball. The Beauforts had been among the first people in New York to own their own red velvet carpet, and have it rolled down the steps by their own footmen under their own awning, instead of hiring it with the supper and the ballroom chairs. They had also inaugurated the custom of letting the ladies take their cloaks off in the hall, instead of shuffling up to the hostess's bedroom and re-curling their hair with the aid of the gas burner. Beaufort was understood to have said that he supposed all his wife's friends had maids who saw to it that they were properly coiffé when they left home. Then the house had been boldly planned with the ballroom, so that, instead of squeezing through a narrow passage to get to it, as at the Chiverses, one marched solemnly down a vista of inflated drawing-rooms, the sea-green, the crimson, and the bouton d'or. Seeing from afar the many-candled lusters reflected in the polished parketry, and beyond that the depths of a conservatory, where camellias and tree-ferns arched their costly foliage over seats of black and gold bamboo. Newland Archer, as became a young man of his position, strolled in somewhat late. He had left his overcoat with the silk-stocking footmen—the stockings were one of Beaufort's few fatuities—had dawdled a while in the library hung with Spanish leather and furnished with buule and malachite, where few men were chatting and putting on their dancing gloves, and had finally joined the line of guests whom Mrs. Beaufort was receiving on the threshold of the crimson drawing-room. Archer was distinctly nervous. He had not gone back to his club after the opera, as the young bloods usually did, but the night being fine had walked for some distance up Fifth Avenue before turning back in the direction of the Beaufort's house. He was definitely afraid that the mingots might be going too far, that in fact they might have granny mingots' orders to bring the Countess Olenska to the ball. From the tone of the club-box he had perceived how grave a mistake that would be, and though he was more than ever determined to see the thing through, he felt less chivalrously eager to champion his betrothed cousin than before their brief talk at the opera. Wandering on to the bouton-door drawing-room, where Beaufort had had the audacity to hang Love Victorious, the much-discussed nude of Bougereau, Archer found Mrs. Welland and her daughter standing near the ball-room door. Couples were already gliding over the floor beyond. The light of the wax-candles fell on revolving-tool skirts, on girlish heads wreathed with modest blossoms, on the dashing egrets and ornaments of the young married women's coiffure, and on the glitter of highly-glazed shirt-fronts and fresh-glosset gloves.  A group of young men and girls were gathered about her, and there was much hand-clasping, laughing, and pleasantry, on which Mrs. Welland, standing slightly apart, shed the beam of a qualified approval. It was evident that Miss Welland was in the act of announcing her engagement, while her mother affected the air of parental reluctance considered suitable to the occasion. Archer paused a moment. It was at his express wish that the announcement had been made, and yet it was not thus that he would have wished to have his happiness known. To proclaim it in the heat and noise of a crowded ballroom was to rob it of the fine bloom of privacy which should belong to things nearest the heart. His joy was so deep that this blurring of the surface left its essence untouched, but he would have liked to keep the surface pure too. It was something of a satisfaction to find that May Welland shared this feeling. Her eyes fled to his beseechingly, and their look said, Remember, we're doing this because it's right. No appeal could have found a more immediate response in Archer's breast, but he wished that the necessity of their action had been represented by some ideal reason, and not simply by poor Ellen Olenska. The group about Miss Welland made way for him with significant smiles, and after taking his share of the felicitations, he drew his betrothed into the middle of the ballroom floor and put his arm about her waist. Now we shan't have to talk, he said, smiling into her candid eyes, as they floated away on the soft waves of the blue Danube. She made no answer. Her lips trembled into a smile, but the eyes remained distant and serious, as if bent on some ineffable vision. Dear! Archer whispered, pressing her to him. It was born in on him that the first hours of being engaged, even if spent in a ballroom, had in them something grave and sacramental. What a new life it was going to be, with this whiteness, radiance, goodness at one side. The dance over, the two, as became an affianced couple, wandered into the conservatory, and sitting behind a tall screen of tree ferns and camellias, Newland pressed her gloved hand to his lips. You see, I did, as you asked me to, she said. Yes, I couldn't wait, he answered, smiling. After a moment, he added, only I wish it hadn't had to be at a ball. Yes, I know. She met his glance, comprehendingly. But after all, even here we're alone together, aren't we? Oh, dearest, always, Archer cried. Evidently she was always going to understand, she was always going to say the right thing. The discovery made the cup of his bliss overflow, and he went on gaily.  As he spoke, he took a swift glance about the conservatory, assured himself of their momentary privacy, and catching her to him, laid a fugitive pressure on her lips. To counteract the audacity of this proceeding, he led her to a bamboo sofa in a less secluded part of the conservatory, and sitting down beside her, broke a lily of the valley from her bouquet.  Did you tell my cousin Ellen? she asked presently, as if she spoke through a dream. He roused himself, and remembered that he had not done so. Some invisible repugnance to speak of such things to the strange foreign woman had checked the words on his lips. No, I hadn't the chance after all, he said, fibbing hastily. Ah! she looked disappointed, but gently resolved on gaining her point. You must, then, for I didn't either, and I shouldn't like her to think. Of course not. But aren't you after all the person to do it? She pondered on this. If I'd done it at the right time, yes. But now that there's been a delay, I think you must explain that I'd asked you to tell her at the opera, before ours speaking about it to everybody here. Otherwise she might think I had forgotten her.  Archer looked at her glowingly. Dear and great angel, of course I'll tell her. He glanced a trifle apprehensively toward the crowded ballroom. But I haven't seen her yet. Has she come? No, at the last minute she decided not to. At the last minute, he echoed, betraying his surprise that she should ever have considered the alternative possible. Yes, she's awfully fond of dancing, the young girl answered simply. But suddenly she made up her mind that her dress wasn't smart enough for a ball, though we thought it so lovely, and so my aunt had to take her home. Oh well! said Archer, with happy indifference. Nothing about his betrothed pleased him more than her resolute determination to carry to its utmost limit that ritual of ignoring the unpleasant in which they had both been brought up. She knows as well as I do, he reflected, the real reason of her cousin staying away, but I shall never let her see by the least sign that I am conscious of there being a shadow of a shade on poor Ellen Olenska's reputation. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of The Age of Innocence This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Elizabeth Klett. The Age of Innocence. By Edith Wharton. Book 1. Chapter 4 In the course of the next day the first of the usual betrothal visits were exchanged. The New York ritual was precise and inflexible in such matters, and in conformity with it Newland Archer first went with his mother and sister to call on Mrs. Welland, after which he and Mrs. Welland and May drove out to old Mrs. Manson Mingott's to receive that venerable ancestral's blessing. A visit to Mrs. Manson Mingott was always an amusing episode to the young man. The house in itself was already an historic document, though not of course as venerable as certain other old family houses in University Place and Lower Fifth Avenue. Those were of the purest 1830, with a grim harmony of cabbage rose-garlanded carpets, rosewood consoles, round-arched fireplaces with black marble mantles, and immense glazed bookcases of mahogany. Whereas old Mrs. Mingott, who had built her house later, had bodily cast out the massive furniture of her prime, and mingled with the Mingott heirlooms the frivolous upholstery of the Second Empire. It was her habit to sit in a window of her sitting-room on the ground floor as if watching calmly for life and fashion to flow northward to her solitary doors. She seemed in no hurry to have them come, for her patience was equaled by her confidence. She was sure that presently the hoardings, the quarries, the one-story saloons, the wooden greenhouses and ragged gardens, and the rocks from which goats surveyed the scene would vanish before the advance of residences as stately as her own, perhaps, for she was an impartial woman, even statelyer, and that the cobble stones over which the old clattering omnibuses bumped would be replaced by smooth asphalt, such as people reported having seen in Paris. Meanwhile, as every one she cared to see came to her, and she could fill her rooms as easily as the Beauforts, and without adding a single item to the menu of her suppers, she did not suffer from her geographic isolation. The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed city, had changed her from a plump, active little woman with a neatly turned foot and ankle into something as vast and august as a natural phenomenon. She had accepted this submergence as philosophically as all her other trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the centre of which the traces of a small face survived as if awaiting excavation. A flight of smooth double chins led down to the dizzy depths of a still snowy bosom failed in snowy muslins that were held in place by a miniature portrait of the Lake Mr. Mingot, and around and below, wave after wave of black silk surged away over the edges of a capacious armchair, with two tiny white hands poised like gulls on the surface of the billows. The burden of Mrs. Benson Mingot's flesh had long since made it impossible for her to go up and down stairs, and with characteristic independence she had made her reception rooms upstairs and established herself, in flagrant violation of all the New York proprieties, on the ground floor of her house, so that, as you sat in her sitting-room window with her, you caught, through a door that was always open and a looped-back yellow damask portiere, the unexpected vista of a bedroom, with a huge low bed upholstered like a sofa, and a toilet-table with frivolous lace flounces and a gilt-framed mirror. Her visitors were startled and fascinated by the foreignness of this arrangement, which recalled scenes in French fiction and architectural incentives to immorality such as the simple American had never dreamed of. That was how women with lovers lived in the wicked old societies, in apartments with all the rooms on one floor, and all the indecent propinquities that their novels described. It amused Newland Archer, who had secretly situated the love scenes of Monsieur de Camor and Mrs. Mingot's bedroom, to picture her blameless life led in the stage setting of adultery, but he said to himself, with considerable admiration, that if a lover had been what she wanted, the intrepid woman would have had him too. To the general relief the Countess Olenska was not present in her grandmother's drawing-room during the visit of the betrothed couple. Mrs. Mingot said she had gone out, which, on a day of such glaring sunlight, and at the shopping hour, seemed in itself an indelicate thing for a compromised woman to do. But at any rate it spared them the embarrassment of her presence, and the faint shadow that her unhappy past might seem to shed on their radiant future. The visit went off successfully, as was to have been expected. Old Mrs. Mingot was delighted with the engagement, which, being long foreseen by watchful relatives, had been carefully passed upon in family council, and the engagement ring, a large, thick sapphire set in invisible claws, met with her unqualified admiration. It's the new setting. Of course it shows the stone beautifully, but it looks a little bare to old-fashioned eyes. Mrs. Welland had explained, with a conciliatory side-glance at her future son-in-law. Old-fashioned eyes! I hope you don't mean mine, my dear. I like all the novelties, said the Ancestris, lifting the stone to her small bright orbs which no glasses had ever disfigured. Very handsome, she added, returning the jewel. Very liberal. In my time a cameo set in pearls was thought sufficient. But it's the hand that sets off the ring, isn't it, my dear Mr. Archer?  Mine was modelled in Rome by the great Ferragiani. You should have maize done. No doubt he'll have it done, my child. Her hand is large. It's these modern sports that spread the joints. But the skin is white. And when's the wedding to be?  Oh! Mrs. Welland murmured, while the young man, smiling at his betroth, replied, As soon as ever it can, if only you'll back me up, Mrs. Mingot. We must give them time to get to know each other a little better, Mamal. Mrs. Welland interposed, with the proper affectation of reluctance, to which the Ancestris rejoined. Know each other? Fiddlesticks. Everybody in New York is always known everybody. Let the young man have his way, my dear. Don't wait till the bubbles off the wine. Marry them before Lent. I may catch pneumonia any winter now, and I want to give the wedding breakfast. These successive statements were received with the proper expressions of amusement, incredulity, and gratitude, and the visit was breaking up in a vein of mild pleasantry when the door opened to admit the Countess Olenska, who entered in bonnet and mantel, followed by the unexpected vigour of Julius Beaufort. There was a cousinly murmur of pleasure between the ladies, and Mrs. Mingot held out Ferragiani's model to the banker. Ha! Beaufort! This is a rare favour! She had an odd foreign way of addressing men by their surnames. Thanks! I wish it might happen oftener," said the visitor in his easy, arrogant way. I'm generally so tied down, but I met the Countess Ellen in Madison Square, and she was good enough to let me walk home with her. Ah! I hope the house will be gayer now that Ellen's here! cried Mrs. Mingot with a glorious effrontery. Sit down! Sit down, Beaufort! Push up the yellow armchair. Now I've got you! I want a good gossip. I hear your ball was magnificent! And I understand you invited Mrs. Lemuel Struthers. Well, I have a curiosity to see the woman myself. She had forgotten her relatives, who were drifting out into the hall under Ellen Olenska's guidance. Old Mrs. Mingot had always professed a great admiration for Julius Beaufort, and there was a kind of kinship in their cool domineering way and their shortcuts through the conventions. Now she was eagerly curious to know what had decided the Beauforts to invite, for the first time, Mrs. Lemuel Struthers, the widow of Struthers' shoe polish, who had returned the previous year from a long initiatory sojourn in Europe to lay siege to the tight little citadel of New York. Of course, if you and Regina invite her, the thing is settled. Well, we need new blood and new money. And I hear she's still very good-looking, the carnivorous old lady declared. In the hall, while Mrs. Welland and May drew on their furs, Archer saw that the Countess Ellenskah was looking at him with a faintly questioning smile. Of course you know already about May and me, he said, answering her look with a shy laugh. She scolded me for not giving you the news last night at the opera. I had her orders to tell you that we were engaged, but I couldn't in that crowd. The smile passed from Countess Ellenskah's eyes to her lips. She looked younger, more like the bold, brown Ellen minget of his boyhood. Of course I know. Yes, and I'm so glad. But one doesn't tell such things first in a crowd. The ladies were on the threshold, and she held out her hand. Good-bye. Come and see me some day," she said, still looking at Archer. In the carriage on the way down Fifth Avenue, they talked pointedly of Mrs. Minget, of her age, her spirit, and all her wonderful attributes. No one alluded to Ellen Ellenskah, but Archer knew that Mrs. Welland was thinking—it's a mistake for Ellen to be seen the very day after her arrival, parading up Fifth Avenue with the crowded hour with Julius Beaufort. And the young man himself mentally added. And she ought to know that a man who's just engaged doesn't spend his time calling on married women. But I dare say in the set she's lived in they do—they never do anything else. And in spite of the cosmopolitan views on which he prided himself, he thanked heaven that he was a New Yorker, and about to ally himself with one of his own kind. The Age of Innocence. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Elizabeth Clett. The Age of Innocence. By Edith Wharton. Book 1. Chapter 5. The next evening old Mr. Sillerton Jackson came to dine with the archers. Mrs. Archer was a shy woman and shrank from society, but she liked to be well informed as to its doings. Her old friend Mr. Sillerton Jackson applied to the investigation of his friend's affairs, the patience of a collector, and the science of a naturalist. And his sister, Miss Sophie Jackson, who lived with him, and was entertained by all the people who could not secure her much sought-after brother, brought home bits of minor gossip that filled out usefully the gaps in his picture. Therefore, whenever anything happened that Mrs. Archer wanted to know about, she asked Mr. Jackson to dine. And as she honored few people with her invitations, and as she and her daughter Janie were an excellent audience, Mr. Jackson usually came himself, instead of sending his sister. If he could have dictated all the conditions, he would have chosen the evenings when Newland was out. Not because the young man was uncongenial to him, the two got on capitalally at their club, but because the old anecdotist sometimes felt, on Newland's part, a tendency to weigh his evidence that the ladies of the family never showed. Mr. Jackson, if perfection had been attainable on earth, would also have asked that Mrs. Archer's food should be a little better. But then New York, as far back as the mind of man could travel, had been divided into the great two fundamental groups of the Mingates and Mansons and all their clan, who cared about eating and clothes and money, and the Archer, Newland, Vanderleiden tribe, who were devoted to travel, horticulture, and the best fiction, and looked down on the grosser forms of pleasure. You couldn't have everything, after all. If you dined with the Lovell Mingates, you got canvas-back and terrapin and vintage wines. At Adeline Archer's you could talk about Alpine scenery and the marble fawn, and luckily the Archer Madeira had gone round the cape. Therefore, when a friendly summons came for Mrs. Archer, Mr. Jackson, who was a true eclectic, would usually say to his sister, I've been a little gouty since my last dinner at the Lovell Mingates, it will do me good to diet at Adelines. Mrs. Archer, who had long been a widow, lived with her son and daughter in West 28th Street. An upper floor was dedicated to Newland, and the two women squeezed themselves into narrower quarters below. In an unclouded harmony of tastes and intellects, they cultivated ferns and wardien cases, made macrame lace and wool embroidery on linen, collected American revolutionary glazed ware, subscribed to good words, and read Weda's novels for the sake of the Italian atmosphere. They preferred those about peasant life, because of the descriptions of scenery and the pleasanter sentiments, though in general they liked novels about people and society, whose motives and habits were more comprehensible, spoke severely of Dickens, who had never drawn a gentleman, and considered Thackery less at home in the great world than Bolwer, who, however, was beginning to be thought old-fashioned. Mrs. and Miss Archer were both great lovers of scenery. It was what they principally sought and admired on their occasional travels abroad, considering architecture and painting as subjects for men, and chiefly for learned persons who read Ruskin. Mrs. Archer had been born a Newland, and mother and daughter, who were as like as sisters, were both, as people said, true Newlands, tall, pale, and slightly round-shouldered, with long noses, sweet smiles, and a kind of drooping distinction, like that in certain faded Reynolds portraits. Their physical resemblance would have been complete if an elderly Anne Bonpoint had not stretched Mrs. Archer's black brocade, while Miss Archer's brown and purple poplins hung, as the years went on, more and more slackly on her virgin frame. Mentally the likeness between them, as Newland was aware, was less complete than their identical mannerisms often made it appear. The long habit of living together and mutually dependent intimacy had given them the same vocabulary, and the same habit of beginning their phrases, mother thinks, or Janey thinks, according as one or the other wished to advance an opinion of her own, but in reality, while Mrs. Archer's serene imaginativeness rested easily in the accepted and familiar, Janey was subject to starts and aberrations of fancy, welling up from springs of suppressed romance. Mother and daughter adored each other, and revered their son and brother, and Archer loved them with a tenderness made compunctious and uncritical by the sense of their exaggerated admiration and by his secret satisfaction in it. After all, he thought it a good thing for a man to have his authority respected in his own house, even if his sense of humor sometimes made him question the force of his mandate. On this occasion the young man was very sure that Mr. Jackson would rather have had him dine out, but he had his own reasons for not doing so. Of course, old Jackson wanted to talk about Ellen Olenska, and of course Mrs. Archer and Janey wanted to hear what he had to tell. All three would be slightly embarrassed by Newlyn's presence, now that his prospective relation to the Mingot clan had been made known, and the young man waited with an amused curiosity to see how they would turn the difficulty. They began, obliquely, by talking about Mrs. Lemuel Struthers. It's a pity the Beauforts asked her, Mrs. Archer said gently, but then Regina always does what he tells her, and Beaufort? Certain nuances escape Beaufort, said Mr. Jackson, cautiously inspecting the broiled shad and wondering for the thousandth time why Mrs. Archer's cook always burnt the row to a cinder. Newlyn, who had long shared his wonder, could always detect it in the older man's expression of melancholy disapproval. Oh, necessarily! Beaufort is a vulgar man, said Mrs. Archer. My grandfather, Newlyn, always used to say to my mother, whatever you do, don't let that fellow Beaufort be introduced to the girls. But at least he's had the advantage of associating with gentlemen. In England, too, they say. It's all very mysterious. She glanced at Janey and paused. She and Janey knew every fold of the Beaufort mystery, but in public Mrs. Archer continued to assume that the subject was not one for the unmarried. But this Mrs. Struthers, Mrs. Archer continued, what did you say she was, Sillerton? Out of a mine, or rather out of the saloon at the head of the pit, then with living waxworks touring New England. After the police broke that up, they say she lived. Mr. Jackson in his turn glanced at Janey, whose eyes began to bulge from under her prominent lids. There were still hiatuses for her in Mrs. Struthers' past. Then, Mr. Jackson continued, and Archer saw he was wondering why no one had told the Butler never to slice cucumbers with a steel knife. Then Lemuel Struthers came along. They say his advertiser used the girl's head for the shoe-polished posters. Her hair's intensely black, you know, the Egyptian style. Anyhow he, eventually, married her. There were volumes of innuendo in the way the eventually was spaced, and each syllable given its due stress. Oh, well, at the pass we've come to nowadays it doesn't matter, said Mrs. Archer, indifferently. The ladies were not really interested in Mrs. Struthers just then. The subject of Ellen Olenska was too fresh and too absorbing to them. Indeed, Mrs. Struthers' name had been introduced by Mrs. Archer, only that she might presently be able to say— And Newland's new cousin, Countess Olenska, was she at the ball, too? There was a faint touch of sarcasm in the reference to her son, and Archer knew it, and had expected it. Even Mrs. Archer, who was seldom unduly pleased with human events, had been altogether glad of her son's engagement. Especially after that silly business with Mrs. Rushworth, as she had remarked to Janie, alluding to what had once seemed to Newland a tragedy of which his soul would always bear the scar. There was no better match in New York than May Welland. Look at the question from whatever point you chose. Of course such a marriage was only what Newland was entitled to, but young men are so foolish and incalculable, and some women so ensnaring and unscrupulous, that it was nothing short of a miracle to see one's only son safe past the siren isle and in the haven of a blameless domesticity. All this Mrs. Archer felt, and her son knew she felt. But he knew also that she had been perturbed by the premature announcement of his engagement, or rather, by its cause, and it was for that reason, because on the whole he was a tender and indulgent master, that he had stayed at home that evening. It's not that I don't approve of the mingots' esprit de corps, but why Newland's engagement should be mixed up with that Olenska woman's comings and goings I don't see? Mrs. Archer grumbled to Janie the only witness of her slight lapses from perfect sweetness. She had behaved beautifully, and in beautiful behavior she was unsurpassed during the call on Mrs. Welland, but Newland knew, and his betrothed doubtless guest, that all through the visit she and Janie were nervously on the watch from Madam Olenska's possible intrusion, and when they left the house together she had permitted herself to say to her son, I'm thankful that Augusta Welland received us alone. These indications of inward disturbance moved Archer the more that he too felt that the mingots had gone a little too far, but as it was against all the rules of their code that the mother and son should ever allude to what was uppermost in their thoughts, he simply replied, Oh well, there's always a phase of family parties to be gone through when one gets engaged, and the sooner it's over, the better. At which his mother merely pursed her lips under the lace veil that hung down from her grey velvet bonnet, trimmed with frosted grapes. Her revenge, he felt—her lawful revenge—would be to draw Mr. Jackson that evening on the Countess Olenska, and having publicly done his duty as a future member of the Mingot clan, the young man had no objection to hearing the lady discussed in private, except that the subject was already beginning to bore him. Mr. Jackson had helped himself to a slice of the tepid filet which the mournful butler had handed him with a look as skeptical as his own, and had rejected the mushroom sauce after a scarcely perceptible sniff. He looked baffled and hungry, and Archer reflected that he would probably finish his meal on Ellen Olenska. Mr. Jackson leaned back in his chair and glanced up at the candle at Archer's, Newlands, and Vanderleidens hanging in dark frames on the dark walls. Ah! how your grandfather Archer loved a good dinner, my dear Newland! he said, his eyes on the portrait of a plump, full-chested young man in a stock and blue coat, with a view of his white-columned country house behind him. Well, well, well, I wonder what he would have said to all these foreign marriages. Mrs. Archer ignored the allusion to the ancestral cuisine, and Mr. Jackson continued with deliberation. No, she was not at the ball. Ah! Mrs. Archer murmured, in a tone that implied, she had that decency. Perhaps the Beauforts don't know her, Janey suggested, with her artless malice. Mr. Jackson gave a faint sip as if he had been tasting invisible Madeira. Mrs. Beaufort may not, but Beaufort certainly does, for she was seen walking up Fifth Avenue this afternoon with him by the whole of New York. Mercy! moaned Mrs. Archer, evidently perceiving the uselessness of trying to ascribe the actions of foreigners to a sense of delicacy. I wonder if she was a round hat or a bonnet in the afternoon, Janey speculated. At the opera I know she had on dark, blue velvet, perfectly plain and flat, like a nightgown. Janey, said her mother, and Mrs. Archer blushed and tried to look audacious. It was at any rate in better taste not to go to the ball. Mrs. Archer continued. A spirit of perversity moved her son to rejoin. I don't think it was a question of taste with her. May said she meant to go, and then decided that the dress in question wasn't smart enough. Mrs. Archer smiled at this confirmation of her inference. Poor Ellen! she simply remarked, adding compassionately, we must always bear in mind what an eccentric bringing up Medora Manson gave her. What can you expect of a girl who is allowed to wear black satin at her coming out ball? Ah! don't I remember her in it! said Mr. Jackson, adding, poor girl! In the tone of one who, while enjoying the memory, had fully understood at the time what the sight portended. It's odd, Janey remarked, that she should have kept such an ugly name as Ellen, I should have changed it to Elaine. She glanced about the table to see the effect of this. Her brother laughed. Why Elaine? I don't know. It sounds more—more Polish, said Janey, blushing. It sounds more conspicuous, and that can hardly be what she wishes, said Mrs. Archer distantly. Why not? broke in her son, growing suddenly argumentative. Why shouldn't she be conspicuous if she chooses? Why should she slink about as if it were she who had disgraced herself? She's poor Ellen, certainly, because she had the bad luck to make a wretched marriage, but I don't see that that's a reason for hiding her head as if she were the culprit. That, I suppose, said Mr. Jackson speculatively, is the line the mingage mean to take. The young man reddened. I didn't have to wait for their cue, if that's what you mean, sir. Madame Olenska has had an unhappy life that doesn't make her an outcast. There are rumours, began Mr. Jackson, glancing at Janey. Oh, I know, the secretary—the young man took him up.  They say, don't they, he went on, that the secretary helped her to get away from her brute of a husband, who kept her practically a prisoner. Well, what if he did? I hope there isn't a man among us who wouldn't have done the same in such a case. Mr. Jackson glanced over his shoulder to say to the sad butler, perhaps that sauce—just a little, after all. Then, having helped himself, he remarked, I'm told she's looking for a house. She means to live here. I hear she means to get a divorce, said Janey boldly. I hope she will, Archer exclaimed. The word had fallen like a bombshell in the pure and tranquil atmosphere of the Archer dining-room. Mrs. Archer raised her delicate eyebrows in the particular curve that signified—the butler. And the young man, himself mindful of the bad taste of discussing such intimate matters in public, hastily branched off into an account of his visit to old Mrs. Mingott. After dinner, according to immemorial custom, Mrs. Archer and Janey trailed their long silk draperies up to the drawing-room, where, while the gentlemen smoked below stairs, they sat beside a car-cell lamp with an engraved globe, facing each other across a rosewood work-table with a green silk bag under it, and stitched at the two ends of a tapestry-band of field-flowers, destined to adorn an occasional chair in the drawing-room of young Mrs. Newland Archer. While this rite was in progress in the drawing-room, Archer settled Mr. Jackson in an arm-chair near the fire in the Gothic Library and handed him a cigar. Mr. Jackson sank into the arm-chair with satisfaction, lit his cigar with perfect confidence. It was Newland who bought them, and stretching his thin old ankles to the coals, said, You say the secretary merely helped her to get away, my dear fellow? Well, he was still helping her a year later, then, for somebody met him living at Lausanne together. Newland reddened. Living together? Well, why not? Who had the right to make her life over if she hadn't?  He stopped and turned away angrily to light his cigar. Women ought to be free, as free as we are, he declared, making a discovery of which he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences. Mr. Sillerton Jackson stretched his ankles near the coals, and emitted a sardonic whistle. Well, he said, after a pause. Apparently Counterlensky takes your view, for I never heard of his having lifted a finger to get his wife back. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of The Age of Innocence This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Elizabeth Klett. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Book 1, Chapter 6 That evening, after Mr. Jackson had taken himself away, and the ladies had retired to their chins curtained bedroom, Newland Archer mounted thoughtfully to his own study. A vigilant hand had, as usual, kept the fire alive and the lamp trimmed, and the room with its rows and rows of books, its bronze and steel statuettes of the fencers on the mantelpiece, and its many photographs of famous pictures looked singularly home-like and welcoming. As he dropped into his armchair near the fire, his eyes rested on a large photograph of May Welland, which the young girl had given him in the first days of their romance, and which had now displaced all the other portraits on the table.  That terrifying product of the social system he belonged to and believed in, the young girl who knew nothing and expected everything, looked back at him like a stranger through May Welland's familiar features, and once more it was borne in on him that marriage was not the safe anchorage he had been taught to think, but a voyage on uncharted seas. The case of the Countess Olenska had stirred up old settled convictions, and set them drifting dangerously through his mind. His own exclamation, women should be free, as free as we are, struck to the root of a problem that it was agreed in his world to regard as non-existent. Nice women, however wronged, would never claim the kind of freedom he meant, and generous-minded men like himself were, therefore, in the heat of argument, the more chivalrous they readied to concede it to them. Such verbal generosity's were in fact only a humbugging disguise of the inexorable conventions that tied things together and bound people down to the old pattern. But here he was pledged to defend on the part of his betrothed cousin, conduct that, on his own wife's part, would justify him in calling down on her all the thunders of church and state. Of course the dilemma was purely hypothetical, since he wasn't a blaggard Polish nobleman, it was absurd to speculate what his wife's rights would be if he were. But Newland Archer was too imaginative not to feel that, in his case and May's, the tie might gall for reasons far less gross and palpable. What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty as a decent fellow to conceal his past from her, and hers as a marriageable girl to have no past to conceal? What if, for some one of the subtler reasons that would tell with both of them, they should tire of each other, misunderstand or irritate each other? He reviewed his friends' marriages, the supposedly happy ones, and saw none that answered even remotely to the passionate and tender comradeship which he pictured as his permanent relation with May Welland. He perceived that such a picture presupposed on her part the experience, the versatility, the freedom of judgment, which she had been carefully trained not to possess. And with a shiver of foreboding, he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were—a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side, and hypocrisy on the other. Lawrence Lafferts occurred to him as the husband who had most completely realized this enviable ideal. As became the high priest of form, he had formed a wife so completely to his own convenience that in the most conspicuous moments of his frequent love affairs with other men's wives, she went about and smiling unconsciousness, saying that Lawrence was so frightfully strict, and had been known to blush indignantly and avert her gaze when someone alluded in her presence to the fact that Julius Beaufort, as became a foreigner of doubtful origin, had what was known in New York as another establishment.  In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world where the real thing was never said or done or even thought but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs. As when Mrs. Welland, who knew exactly why Archer had pressed her to announce her daughter's engagement at the Beaufort Ball, and had indeed expected him to do no less, yet felt obliged to simulate reluctance, with the air of having had her hand forced, quite as, in the books on primitive man that people of advanced culture were beginning to read, the savage bride is dragged with shrieks from her parents' tent. The result, of course, was that the young girl who was the centre of this elaborate system of mystification remained the more inscrutable for her very frankness and assurance. She was frank, poor darling, because she had nothing to conceal, assured because she knew of nothing to be on her guard against, and with no better preparation than this, she was to be plunged overnight into what people evasively called the facts of life. The young man was sincerely but placidly in love. He delighted in the radiant good looks of his betrothed, in her health, her horsemanship, her grace and quickness at games, and the shy interest in books and ideas that she was beginning to develop under his guidance. She had advanced far enough to join him in ridiculing the idols of the king, but not to feel the beauty of Ulysses and the lotus-eaters. She was straightforward, loyal, and brave. She had a sense of humour, chiefly proved by her laughing at his jokes, and he suspected in the depths of her innocently gazing soul a glow of feeling that it would be a joy to waken. But when he had gone the brief round of her, he returned discouraged by the thought that all this frankness and innocence were only an artificial product. Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent, it was full of the twists and defences of an instinctive guile. And he himself felt oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow. There was a certain triteness in those reflections. They were those habitual to young men on the approach of their wedding-day, but they were generally accompanied by a sense of compunction and self-abasement of which Newland Archer felt no trace. He could not deplore, as Thakiri's hero so often exasperated him by doing, but he had not a blank page to offer his bride in exchange for the unblemished one she was to give to him. He could not get away from the fact that if he had been brought up as she had, they would have been no more fit to find their way about than the babes in the wood, nor could he, for all his anxious cogitations, see any honest reason, any that is unconnected with his own momentary pleasure and the passion of masculine vanity, why his bride should not have been allowed the same freedom of experience as himself. Such questions, at such an hour, were bound to drift through his mind, but he was conscious that their uncomfortable persistence and precision were due to the inopportune arrival of the Countess Olenska. Here he was, at the very moment of his betrothal, a moment for pure thoughts and cloudless hopes, pitchforked into a coil of scandal which raised all the special problems he would have preferred to let lie.  He could not really see why her fate should have the least bearing on his, yet he dimly felt that he had only just begun to measure the risks of the championship which his engagement had forced upon him. A few days later the bolt fell. The lovell-mingits had sent out cards for what was known as a formal dinner, that is, three extra-footmen, two dishes for each course, and a Roman punch in the middle, and had headed their invitations with the words, to meet the Countess Olenska, in accordance with the hospitable American fashion which treats strangers as if they were royalties, or at least as their ambassadors. The guests had been selected with a boldness and discrimination in which the initiate had recognized the firm hand of Catherine the Great, associated with such immemorial standbys as the Selfridge Marys, who were asked everywhere because they had always been, the Beauforts, on whom there was a claim of relationship, and Mr. Sillerton Jackson and his sister Sophie, who went wherever her brother told her to, were some of the most fashionable and yet the most irreproachable of the dominant young married set. The Lawrence Lefferts'—Mrs. Leffert's Rushworth, the lovely widow, the Harry Thorleys, the Reggie Chivers' is, and young Morris Dagonet and his wife, who was of Anderleiden. The company indeed was perfectly assorted, since all the members belonged to the little inner group of people who, during the long New York season, disported themselves together daily and nightly with apparently undiminished zest. Forty-eight hours later the unbelievable had happened. Every one had refused the Mingott's invitation except the Beauforts and old Mr. Jackson and his sister. The intended slight was emphasized by the fact that even the Reggie Chivers' who were of the Mingott clan were among those inflicting it, and by the uniform wording of the notes, in all of which the writers regretted that they were unable to accept, without the mitigating plea of a previous engagement that ordinary courtesy prescribed. New York society was, in those days, far too small and too scant in its resources for every one in it, including livery stablekeepers, butlers, and cooks, not to know exactly on which evenings people were free, and it was thus possible for the recipients of Mrs. Lovell Mingott's to make cruelly clear their determination not to meet the Countess Olenska. The blow was unexpected, but the Mingott's, as their way was, met it gallantly. Mrs. Lovell Mingott confided the case to Mrs. Welland, who confided it to Newland Archer, who, a flame at the outrage, appealed passionately and authoritatively to his mother, who, after a painful nod of inward resistance and outward temporizing, succumbed to his instances, as she always did, and immediately embracing his cause with an energy redoubled by her previous hesitations, put on her grey velvet bonnet and said, I'll go and see Louisa van der Leiden. The New York of Newland Archer's day was a small and slippery pyramid, in which as yet hardly a fissure had been made, or a foothold, gained. At its base was a firm foundation of what Mrs. Archer called plain people, an honourable but obscure majority of respectable families, who, as in the case of the Spicers, or the Lefferts, or the Jacksons, had been raised above their level by marriage with one of the ruling clans. People, Mrs. Archer always said, were not as particular as they used to be, and with old Catherine Spicer ruling one end of Fifth Avenue and Julius Bofort the other, you couldn't expect the old traditions to last much longer. Firmly narrowing upward from this wealthy but inconspicuous substratum was the compact and dominant group which the Mingates, Newlands, Chiverses, and Mansons so actively represented. Most people imagined them to be the very apex of the pyramid, but they themselves, at least those of Mrs. Archer's generation, were aware that, in the eyes of the professional genealogist, only a still smaller number of families could lay claim to that eminence. Don't tell me, Mrs. Archer would say to her children, all this modern newspaper rubbish about a New York aristocracy. If there is one, neither the Mingates nor the Mansons belong to it. No, nor the Newlands or the Chiverses either. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers were just respectable English or Dutch merchants who came to the colonies to make their fortune and stayed here because they did so well. One of your great-grandfathers signed the declaration, and another was a general on Washington's staff and received General Burgoyne's sword after the Battle of Saratoga. These are things to be proud of, but they have nothing to do with rank or class. New York has always been a commercial community, and there are not more than three families in it who can claim an aristocratic origin in the real sense of the word. Mrs. Archer and her son and daughter, like everyone else in New York, knew who these privileged beings were, the Dagonettes of Washington Square, who came of an old English-country family allied with the Pits and the Foxes, the Lannings, who had intermarried with the descendants of Count de Grasse, and the Vanderleidens, direct descendants of the first Dutch governor of Manhattan, and related by pre-revolutionary marriages to several members of the French and British aristocracy. The Lannings survived only in the person of two very old but lively Miss Lannings, who lived cheerfully and reminiscently among family portraits and chipendales. The Dagonettes were a considerable clan, allied to the best names in Baltimore and Philadelphia, but the Vanderleidens, who stood above them all, had faded into a kind of superterrestrial twilight, from which only two figures impressively emerged, those of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Vanderleiden. Mrs. Henry Vanderleiden had been Louisa Dagonette, and her mother had been the granddaughter of Colonel Duloc, of an old Channel Island family, who had fought under Cornwallis and had settled in Maryland after the war with his bride, Lady Angelica Trevenna, fifth daughter of the Earl of St. Austrie. The tie between the Dagonettes, the Dulocs of Maryland, and their aristocratic Cornish Kinfolk, the Trevennas, had always remained close and cordial. Mr. and Mrs. Vanderleiden had more than once paid long visits to the present head of the House of Trevenna, the Duke of St. Austrie, at his country's seat in Cornwall, and at St. Austrie in Gloucestershire, and his grace had frequently announced his intention of some day returning their visit, without the Duchess, who feared the Atlantic. Mr. and Mrs. Vanderleiden divided their time between Trevenna, their place in Maryland, and Skytercliffe, the greatest state on the Hudson which had been one of the colonial grants of the Dutch government, to the famous First Governor, and of which Mr. Vanderleiden was still Patroon. Their large solemn house in Madison Avenue was seldom opened, and when they came to town, they received in it only their most intimate friends. "'I wish you could go with me, Newland,' his mother said, suddenly pausing at the door of the Brown Coupé. "'Louisa is fond of you, and of course it's on account of dear May that I'm taking this step, and also because, if we don't all stand together, there'll be no such thing as society left.'" CHAPTER VII Mrs. Henry Vanderleiden listened in silence to her cousin Mrs. Archer's narrative. It was all very well to tell yourself in advance that Mrs. Vanderleiden was always silent, and that, though non-committal by nature and training, she was very kind to the people she really liked. Even personal experience of these facts was not always a protection from the chill that descended on one in the high-ceilinged white-walled Madison Avenue drawing-room, with the pale, brocaded arm-chairs so obviously uncovered for the occasion, and the gauze still veiling the ormelu mantel ornaments and the beautiful old carved frame of Gainsborough's Lady Angelica du Lac. Mrs. Vanderleiden's portrait by Huntington, in black velvet and Venetian point, faced that of her lovely ancestress. It was generally considered as fine as a cabinelle, and though twenty years had elapsed since its execution, was still a perfect likeness. Indeed, the Mrs. Vanderleiden who sat beneath it listening to Mrs. Archer might have been the twin sister of the fair and still youngish woman drooping against a gilt arm-chair before a green-rep curtain. Mrs. Vanderleiden still wore black velvet and Venetian point when she went into society, or rather, since she never dined out, when she threw open her own doors to receive it. Her fair hair, which had faded without turning grey, was still parted in flat overlapping points on her forehead, and the straight nose that divided her pale blue eyes was only a little more pinched about the nostrils than when the portrait had been painted. She always, indeed, struck Newland Archer as having been rather gruesomely preserved in the airless atmosphere of a perfectly irreproachable existence, as bodies caught in glaciers keep for years a rosy life and death. Like all his family he esteemed and admired Mrs. Vanderleiden, but he found her gentle bending sweetness less approachable than the grimness of some of his mother's old aunts, fierce spinsters who said no on principle before they knew what they were going to be asked. Mrs. Vanderleiden's attitude said neither yes or no, but always appeared to incline to clemency till her thin lips, wavering into the shadow of a smile, made the almost invariable reply, I shall first have to talk this over with my husband. She and Mr. Vanderleiden were so exactly alike that Archer often wondered how, after forty years of the closest conjugality, two such merged identities ever separated themselves enough for anything as controversial as a talking over. But as neither had ever reached a decision without prefacing it by this mysterious conclave Mrs. Archer and her son, having set forth their case, waited resignedly for the familiar phrase. Mrs. Vanderleiden, however, who had seldom surprised any one, now surprised them by reaching her long hand toward the bell-rope. I think, she said, I should like Henry to hear what you have told me. A footman appeared, to whom she gravely added, if Mr. Vanderleiden has finished reading the newspaper, please ask him to be kind enough to come. She said, reading the newspaper, in the tone in which a minister's wife might have said, presiding at a cabinet meeting. Not from any arrogance of mind, but because the habit of a lifetime, and the attitude of her friends and relations, had led her to consider Mr. Vanderleiden's least gesture as having an almost sacerdotal importance. Her promptness of action showed that she considered the case as pressing as Mrs. Archer. But, lest she should be thought to have committed herself in advance, she added, with the sweetest look, Henry always enjoys seeing you, dear Adeline, and he will wish to congratulate Newland. The double doors had solemnly reopened, and between them appeared Mr. Henry Vanderleiden, tall, spare, and frock-coated, with faded hair, a straight nose like his wife's, and the same look of frozen gentleness in eyes that were merely pale gray instead of pale blue. Mr. Vanderleiden greeted Mrs. Archer with cousinly affability, proffered to Newland low-voiced congratulations, couched in the same language as his wife's, and seated himself in one of the brocade arm-chairs with the simplicity of a reigning sovereign. I had just finished reading the Times, he said, laying his long fingertips together. In town my mornings are so much occupied that I find it more convenient to read the newspapers after luncheon. Ah, there's a great deal to be said for that plan! Indeed, I think my Uncle Eggmont used to say he found it less agitating not to read the morning papers till after dinner, said Mrs. Archer responsively. Yes, my good father abhorred, hurry, but now we live in a constant rush, said Mr. Vanderleiden, in a measured tones, looking with pleasant deliberation about the large, shrouded room which to Archer was so complete an image of its owners. But I hope you had finished your reading, Henry, his wife interposed. Quite, quite, he reassured her. Then I should like add a line to tell you, Oh, it's really Newland's story, said his mother smiling, and proceeded to rehearse once more the monstrous tale of the affront inflicted on Mrs. Lovell-Mingott. Of course, she ended, Augusta Welland and Mary Mingott both felt that, especially in view of Newland's engagement, you and Henry ought to know. Ah! said Mr. Vanderleiden, drawing a deep breath. There was a silence during which the tick of the monumental ormilu clock on the white marble mantelpiece grew as loud as the boom of a minute-gun. Archer contemplated with awe the two slender faded figures, seated side by side in a kind of vice-regal rigidity, mouthpieces of some remote ancestral authority which fate compelled them to wield, when they would so much rather have lived in simplicity and seclusion, digging invisible weeds out of the perfect lawns of skidercliff and playing patience together in the evenings. Mr. Vanderleiden was the first to speak. You really think this is due to some—some intentional interference of Lawrence Leffert's? he inquired, turning to Archer. I am certain of it, sir. Larry has been going it rather harder than usual lately, if Cousin Louisa won't mind my mentioning it, having rather a stiff affair with the Postmaster's wife in their village or some one of that sort. And whenever poor Gertrude Lefferts begins to suspect anything, and he is afraid of trouble, he gets up a fuss of this kind to show how awfully moral he is, and talks at the top of his voice about the impertinence of inviting his wife to meet people he doesn't wish her to know. He's simply using Madame Olenska as a lightning rod. I've seen him try the same thing often before. The Lefferts's! said Mrs. Vanderleiden. The Lefferts's! echoed Mrs. Archer. What would Uncle Eggmont have said of Lawrence Lefferts's pronouncing on anybody's social position? It shows what society has come to. We'll hope it has not quite come to that. said Mr. Vanderleiden firmly. Ah, if only you and Louisa went out more! sighed Mrs. Archer. But instantly she became aware of her mistake. The Vanderleidens were morbidly sensitive to any criticism of their secluded existence. They were the arbiters of fashion, the court of last appeal, and they knew it, and bowed to their fate. But being shy and retiring persons with no natural inclination for their part, they lived as much as possible in the sylvan solitude of Skydercliffe, and when they came to town, declined all invitations on the plea of Mrs. Vanderleiden's health. Newland Archer came to his mother's rescue. Everybody in New York knows what you and cousin Louisa represent. That's why Mrs. Miggit felt she ought not to allow this slight on Countess Alenska to pass without consulting you. Mrs. Vanderleiden glanced at her husband, who glanced back at her. It is the principle that I dislike, said Mr. Vanderleiden. As long as a member of a well-known family is backed up by that family it should be considered final. It seems so to me, said his wife, as if she were producing a new thought. I had no idea, Mr. Vanderleiden continued, that things had come to such a pass. He paused, and looked at his wife again. It occurs to me, my dear, that the Countess Alenska is already a sort of relation, through Madora Manson's first husband, at any rate she will be when Newland marries. He turned towards the young man. Have you read this morning's Times, Newland?  Husband and wife looked at each other again. Their pale eyes clung together in prolonged and serious consultation. Then a faint smile fluttered over Mrs. Vanderleiden's face. She had evidently guessed and approved. Mr. Vanderleiden turned to Mrs. Archer. If Louise's health allowed her to dine out, I wish she would say to Mrs. Lovell-Mingott, she and I would have been happy to fill the places of the Lawrence Lefferts' at her dinner. He paused to let the irony of this sink in. As you know, this is impossible. Mrs. Archer sounded a sympathetic ascent. But Newland tells me he has read this morning's Times. Therefore he is probably seen that Louise's relative, the Ducous and Austrie, arrives next week on the Russia. He is coming to enter his new sloop, the Guinevere, in next summer's international cup-race, and also to have a little canvas-back shooting at Trevenna. Mr. Vanderleiden paused again, and continued with increasing benevolence. Before taking him down to Maryland we are inviting a few friends to meet him here, only a little with the reception afterward. I am sure Louise will be as glad as I am if Countess Olenska will let us include her among our guests. He got up, bent his long body with a stiff friendliness toward his cousin, and added, I think I have Louise's authority for saying that she will herself leave the invitation to dine when she drives out presently, with our cards, of course with our cards. Louise Archer, who knew this to be a hint that the seventeen-hand chestnuts which were never kept waiting were at the door, rose with a hurried murmur of thanks. Mrs. Vanderleiden beamed on her with a smile of ester interceding with a hazardous, but her husband raised a protesting hand. There is nothing to thank me for, dear Adeline, nothing whatever. This kind of thing must not happen in New York. It shall not, as long as I can help it. He pronounced with sovereign gentleness as he steered his cousins to the door. Two hours later, every one knew that the great sea-spring Baruch in which Mrs. Vanderleiden took the air at all seasons had been seen at Old Mrs. Mingott's door, where a large square envelope was handed in, and that evening at the opera, Mr. Sillerton Jackson was able to state that the envelope contained a card inviting the Countess Olenska to dinner, which the Vanderleidens were giving the following week for their cousin, the Duke of St. Austrie. Some of the younger men in the club-box exchanged a smile at this announcement and glanced sideways at Lawrence Lefferts, who sat carelessly in the front of the box, pulling his long, fair moustache, and who remarked with authority as the soprano paused. No one but Patti ought to attempt the Sonambula. CHAPTER VIII. It was generally agreed in New York that the Countess Olenska had lost her looks. She had appeared there first in Newland Archer's boyhood as a brilliantly pretty little girl of nine or ten, of whom people said that she ought to be painted. Her parents had been continental wanderers, and after a roaming babyhood she had lost them both, and been taken in charge by her aunt, Midora Manson, also a wanderer, who was herself returning to New York to settle down. Poor Midora, repeatedly widowed, was always coming home to settle down, each time in a less expensive house, and bringing with her a new husband or an adopted child. But after a few months she invariably parted from her husband or quarreled with her ward, and having got rid of her house at a loss, set out again on her wanderings.  But when she returned with her little orphaned niece, whose parents had been popular in spite of their regrettable taste for travel, people thought it a pity that the pretty child should be in such hands. Everyone was disposed to be kind to little Ellen Mingott, though her dusky red cheeks and tight curls gave her an air of gaiety that seemed unsuitable in a child who should still have been when black for her parents. It was one of the misguided Midora's many peculiarities to flout the unalterable rules that regulated American mourning, and when she stepped from the steamer, her family were scandalized to see that the crepe veil she wore for her own brother was seven inches shorter than those of her sisters-in-law, while little Ellen was in crimson merino and amber beads, like a gypsy foundling. But New York had so long resigned itself to Midora that only a few old ladies shook their heads over Ellen's gaudy clothes, while her other relations fell under the charm of her high color and high spirits. She was a fearless and familiar little thing, who asked disconcerting questions, made precocious comments, and possessed outlandish arts, such as dancing a Spanish shawl dance, and singing Neapolitan love songs to a guitar. Under the direction of her aunt, whose real name was Mrs. Thorly Chivers, but who, having received a papal title, had resumed her first husband's patronymic, and called herself the Martianess Manson, because in Italy she could turn it into Manzoni. The little girl received an expensive but incoherent education, which included drawing from the model, a thing never dreamed of before, and playing the piano in quintets with professional musicians. Of course no good could come of this, and when, a few years later, poor Chivers finally died in a madhouse, his widow, draped in strange weeds, again pulled up stakes and departed with Ellen, who had grown into a tall bony girl with conspicuous eyes. For some time no more was heard of them. Then news came of Ellen's marriage to an immensely rich Polish nobleman of legendary fame, whom she had met at a ball at the Tuileries, and who was said to have princely establishments in Paris, Nice and Florence, a yacht at Coe, and many square miles of shooting in Transylvania. She disappeared in a kind of sulfurous apotheosis, and when a few years later Madora again came back to New York, subdued, impoverished, mourning a third husband, and in quest of a still smaller house, people wondered that her rich niece had not been able to do something for her. Then came the news that Ellen's own marriage had ended in disaster, and that she was herself returning home to seek rest and oblivion among her kinsfolk. These things passed through Newland Archer's mind a week later, as he watched the Countess Olenska enter the van der Leiden drawing-room on the evening of the momentous dinner. The occasion was a solemn one, and he wondered a little nervously how she would carry it off. She came rather late, one hand still ungloved, and fastening a bracelet about her wrist. Yet she entered without any appearance of haste or embarrassment, the drawing-room in which New York's most chosen company was somewhat awfully assembled. In the middle of the room she paused, looking about her with a grave mouth and smiling eyes, and in that instant Newland Archer rejected the general verdict on her looks. It was true that her early radiance had gone. The red cheeks had paled, she was thin, worn, a little older looking than her age, which must have been nearly thirty. But there was about her the mysterious authority of beauty, a sureness in the carriage of the head, the movement of the eyes, which, without being in the least theatrical, struck his as highly trained and full of a conscious power. At the same time she was simpler in manner than most of the ladies present, and many people, as he heard afterwards from Janie, were disappointed that her appearance was not more stylish, or stylishness was what New York most valued. It was, perhaps, Archer reflected, because her early vivacity had disappeared, because she was so quiet, quiet in her movements, her voice, and the tones of her low-pitched voice. New York had expected something a good deal more resonant in a young woman with such a history. The dinner was a somewhat formidable business. Dining with the van der Leidens was at best no light matter, and dining there with a duke who was their cousin was almost a religious solemnity. It pleased Archer to think that only an old New Yorker could perceive the shade of difference to New York between being merely a duke and being the van der Leidens duke. New York took stray noblemen calmly and even, except in the Struthers set, with a certain distrustful auteur. But when they presented such credentials as these, they were received with an old-fashioned cordiality that they would have been greatly mistaken in ascribing solely to their standing and debret. It was for just such distinctions that the young man cherished his old New York even while he smiled at it. The van der Leidens had done their best to emphasize the importance of the occasion. The Dulaksevre and the Trevenna George II plate were out, so was the van der Leidens Lowstoft, East India Company, and the Dagonit Crown Darby. Mrs. van der Leidens looked more than ever like a cabanel, and Mrs. Archer, in her grandmother's seed-pearls and emeralds, reminded her son of an Asabi miniature. All the ladies had on their handsomest jewels, but it was characteristic of the house and the occasion that these were mostly in rather heavy old-fashioned settings, and old Miss Lanning, who had been persuaded to come, actually wore her mother's cameos and a Spanish-blonde shawl. The Countess Olenska was the only young woman at the dinner, yet, as Archer scanned the smooth, plump, elderly faces between their diamond necklaces and towering ostrich feathers, they struck him as curiously immature compared with hers. It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes. The Duke of Sintostri, who sat at his hostess's right, was naturally the chief figure of the evening. But if the Countess Olenska was less conspicuous than had been hoped, the Duke was almost invisible. Being a well-bred man, he had not, like another recent Ducal visitor, come to the dinner in a shooting jacket, but his evening clothes were so shabby and baggy, and he wore them with such an air of their being homespun. That, with his stooping way of sitting and the vast beard spreading over his shirt-front, he hardly gave the appearance of being in dinner attire. He was short, round-shouldered, sunburnt, with a thick nose, small eyes, and a sociable smile, but he seldom spoke, and when he did, it was in such low tones that, despite the frequent silences of expectation about the table, his remarks were lost to all but his neighbours. When the men joined the ladies after dinner, the Duke went straight up to the Countess Olenska, and they sat down in a corner and plunged into animated talk. Neither seemed aware that the Duke should first have paid his respects to Mrs. Lovell-Mingott and Mrs. Headley Chivers, and the Countess have conversed with that amiable hypochondriac Mr. Urban Dagonet of Washington Square, who, in order to have the pleasure of meeting her, had broken through his fixed rule of not dining out between January and April. The two chatted together for nearly twenty minutes, then the Countess rose, and walking alone across the wide drawing-room sat down at Newland Archer's side. It was not the custom in New York drawing-rooms for a lady to get up and walk away from one gentleman in order to seek the company of another. Atticate required that she should wait, immovable as an idol, while the men who wished to converse with her succeeded each other at her side. But the Countess was apparently unaware of having broken any rule. She sat at perfect ease in a corner of the sofa beside Archer, and looked at him with the kindest eyes. "'I want you to talk to me about May,' she said. Instead of answering her, he asked, "'You knew the Duke before?' "'Oh, yes. We used to see him every winter at Nice. He's very fond of gambling. He used to come to the house a great deal.' She said it in the simplest manner, as if she had said, "'He's fond of wildflowers.' And after a moment she added candidly, "'I think he's the dullest man I ever met.'" This pleased her companion so much that he forgot the slight shock her previous remark had caused him. It was undeniably exciting to meet a lady who found the van der Leiden's Duke dull and dared to utter the opinion. He longed to question her, to hear more about the life of which her careless words had given him so illuminating a glimpse, but he feared to touch on distressing memories, and before he could think of anything to say, she had strayed back to her original subject. "'May is a darling. I've seen no young girl in New York so handsome and so intelligent. Are you very much in love with her?' Newland Archer reddened and laughed. As much as a man can be." She continued to consider him thoughtfully, as if not to miss any shade of meaning in what he said. "'Do you think, then, there is a limit?' "'To being in love. If there is, I haven't found it.'" She glowed with sympathy. "'Ah, it's really and truly a romance. The most romantic of romances. How delightful! And you found it all out for yourselves. It was not on the least arranged for you.' Archer looked at her incredulously. "'Have you forgotten?' he asked with a smile. "'That in our country we don't allow our marriages to be arranged for us.'" A dusky blush rose to her cheek, and he instantly regretted his words. "'Yes,' she answered. "'I'd forgotten. You must forgive me if I sometimes make these mistakes. I don't always remember that everything here is good that was—that was bad where I've come from.' Archer looked down at her Viennese fan of eagle feathers, and he saw that her lips trembled. "'I'm so sorry,' he said impulsively. "'But you are among friends here, you know.' "'Yes, I know. Wherever I go I have that feeling. That's why I came home. I want to forget everything else, to become a complete American again, like the Mingates and the Wellands, and you and your delightful mother, and all the other good people here tonight.' "'Oh, here's May arriving, and you will want to hurry away to her,' she added, but without moving, and her eyes turned back from the door to rest on the young man's face. The drawing-rooms were beginning to fill up with after-dinner guests, and following Madame Olenska's glance, Archer saw May Welland entering with her mother. In her dress of white and silver, with a wreath of silver blossoms in her hair, the tall girl looked like a Diana just alight from the chase. "'Oh,' said Archer, "'I have so many rivals. You see she's already surrounded. There's the duke being introduced.' "'Then stay with me a little longer,' Madame Olenska said in a low tone, just touching his knee with her plumed fan. It was the lightest touch, but it thrilled him like a caress. "'Yes, let me stay,' he answered in the same tone, hardly knowing what he said. But just then Mr. van der Leiden came up, followed by old Mr. Urban Dagonet. The Countess greeted them with her grave smile, and Archer, feeling that his hosts had monetary glance was on him, rose and surrendered his seat. Madame Olenska held out her hand, as if to bid him good-bye. "'Tomorrow, then, after five. I shall expect you,' she said, and then turned back to make room for Mr. Dagonet. "'Tomorrow,' Archer heard himself repeating, though there had been no engagement, and during their talk she had given him no hint that she wished to see him again. As he moved away he saw Lawrence Leffert's tall and resplendent, leading his wife up to be introduced, and heard Gertrude Leffert's say as she beamed on the Countess with her large, unperceiving smile. But I think we used to go to dancing school together when we were children.' Behind her, waiting their turn to name themselves to the Countess, Archer noticed a number of the recalcitrant couples who had declined to meet her at Mrs. Lovell-Mingott's. As Mrs. Archer remarked, when the van der Leiden's chose, they knew how to give a lesson. The wonder was that they chose so seldom. The young man felt a touch on his arm, and saw Mrs. Van der Leiden looking down on him from the pure eminence of black velvet and the family diamonds. It was good of you, dear Newland, to devote yourself so unselfishly to Madame Olenska. I told your cousin Henry he really must come to the rescue. He was aware of smiling at her vaguely, and she added, as if condescending to his natural shyness, I've never seen May looking lovelier. The duke thinks her the handsomest girl in the room. CHAPTER IX The Countess Olenska had said, after five, and at half after the hour Newland Archer rang the bell of the peeling stucco house with a giant wisteria throttling its feeble cast-iron balcony, which she had hired, far down West 23rd Street, from the vagabond Madora. It was certainly a strange quarter to have settled in. Small dressmakers, bird-stuffers, and people who wrote, were her nearest neighbors. And further down the dishevelled street, Archer recognized a dilapidated wooden house at the end of a paved path in which a writer and journalist called Winsett, whom he used to come across now and then, had mentioned that he lived. Winsett did not invite people to his house, but he had once pointed it out to Archer in the course of a nocturnal stroll, and the latter had asked himself, with a little shiver, if the humanities were so meanly housed in other capitals. Mademolenska's own dwelling was redeemed from the same appearance only by a little more paint about the window frames. And as Archer mustered its modest front, he said to himself that the Polish Count must have robbed her of her fortune as well as of her illusions. The young man had spent an unsatisfactory day. He had lunched with the Wellens, hoping afterward to carry off May for a walk in the park. He wanted to have her to himself, to tell her how enchanting she had looked the night before, and how proud he was of her, and to press her to hasten their marriage. But Mrs. Welland had firmly reminded him that the round of family visits was not half over, and when he hinted at advancing the date of the wedding, had raised reproachful eyebrows and sighed out, twelve dozen of everything, hand-embroidered. Packed in the family landow, they rolled from one tribal doorstep to another, and Archer, when the afternoon's round was over, parted from his betrothed with the feeling that he had been shown off like a wild animal cunningly trapped. He supposed that his readings in anthropology caused him to take such a coarse view of what was, after all, a simple and natural demonstration of family feeling, but when he remembered that the Wellans did not expect the wedding to take place till the following autumn, and pictured what his life would be till then, a dampness fell upon his spirit. "'Tomorrow,' Mrs. Welland called after him, "'we'll do the chiverses and the dallises.' And he perceived that she was going through their two families alphabetically, and that they were only in the first quarter of the alphabet.' He had meant to tell May of the Countess Olenska's request—her command, rather—that he should call on her that afternoon. But in the brief moments when they were alone, he had had more pressing things to say. Besides, it struck him as a little absurd to allude to the matter. He knew that May most particularly wanted him to be kind to her cousin. Was it not that wish which had hastened the announcement of their engagement? It gave him an odd sensation to reflect that, but for the Countess's arrival he might have been, if not still a free man, at least a man less irrevocably pledged. But May had wielded so, and he felt himself somehow relieved of further responsibility, and therefore at liberty, if he chose, to call on her cousin without telling her. As he stood on Madame Olenska's threshold, curiosity was his uppermost feeling. He was puzzled by the tone in which she had summoned him. He concluded that she was less simple than she seemed. The door was opened by a swarthy, foreign-looking maid, with a prominent bosom under a gay neckerchief, whom he fancied vaguely to be Sicilian. She welcomed him with all her white teeth, and answering his enquiries by a head-shake of incomprehension led him through the narrow hall into the low, fire-lit drawing-room. The room was empty, and she left him, for an appreciable time, to wonder whether she had gone to find her mistress, or whether she had not understood what he was there for, and thought it might be to wind the clock, of which he perceived that the only visible specimen had stopped. He knew that the southern races communicated with each other in the language of pantomime, and was mortified to find her shrugs and smiles so unintelligible. At length she returned with a lamp, and Archer, having meanwhile put together a phrase out of Dante and Petrarch, evoked the answer. La signore e fiori, ma ver subito.  What he saw, meanwhile, with the help of the lamp, was the faded, shadowy charm of a room unlike any room he had known. He knew that the Countess Olenska had brought some of her possessions with her, bits of wreckage, she called them, and these, he supposed, were represented by some small slender tables of dark wood, a delicate little Greek bronze on the chimney-piece, and a stretch of red damask nailed on the discolored wallpaper behind a couple of Italian-looking pictures in old frames. Newland Archer prided himself on his knowledge of Italian art. His boyhood had been saturated with Ruskin, and he had read all the latest books, John Eddington Simmons, Vernon Lee's Euphorian, the essays of P. G. Hammerton, and a wonderful new volume called The Renaissance by Walter Pater. He talked easily of Botticelli, and spoke of Fra Angelico with a faint condescension. But these pictures bewildered him, for they were like nothing that he was accustomed to look at, and therefore able to see, when he travelled in Italy. And perhaps also his powers of observation were impaired by the oddness of finding himself in this strange empty house, where apparently no one expected him. He was sorry he had not told Maywell and if Countess Olenska's request, and a little disturbed by the thought that his betrothed might come in to see her cousin. What would she think if she found him sitting there with the air of intimacy implied by waiting alone the dusk at a lady's fireside? But since he had come he meant to wait, and he sank into a chair and stretched his feet to the logs. It was odd to have summoned him in that way and then forgotten him, but Archer felt more curious than mortified. The atmosphere of the room was so different from any he had ever breathed that self consciousness vanished in the sense of adventure. He had been before in drawing-rooms hung with red damask, with pictures of the Italian school. What struck him was the way in which Medora Manson's shabby-hired house, with its blighted background of pampus grass and Roger's statuettes, had, by a turn of the hand, and the skillful use of a few properties, been transformed into something intimate, foreign, subtly suggestive of old romantic scenes and sentiments. He tried to analyze the trick, to find a clue to it in the way the chairs and tables were grouped, in the fact that only two Giacmino roses, of which nobody ever bought less than a dozen, had been placed in the slender vows at his elbow, and in the vague pervading perfume that was not what one put on handkerchiefs, but rather like the scent of some far-off bazaar, a smell made up of Turkish coffee, and ambergris, and dried roses. His mind wandered away to the question of what May's drawing-room would look like. He knew that Mr. Welland, who was behaving very handsomely, already had his eye on a newly-built house in East 39th Street. The neighborhood was thought remote, and the house was built in a ghastly, greenish-yellow stone that the younger architects were beginning to employ as a protest against the brownstone of which the uniform hue coated New York, like a cold chocolate sauce. But the plumbing was perfect. Archer would have liked to travel, to put off the housing question. But though the Wellands approved of an extended European honeymoon, perhaps even a winter in Egypt, they were firm as to the need of a house for the returning couple. The young man felt that his fate was sealed. For the rest of his life he would go up every evening between the cast-iron railings of that greenish-yellow doorstep, and pass through a Pompeian vestibule into a hall with wainscotting of varnished yellow wood. But beyond that his imagination could not travel. He knew the drawing-room above had a bay window, but he could not fancy how May would deal with it. She submitted cheerfully to the purple satin and yellow tuftings of the Welland drawing-room to its sham-bule tables and guilt-betrains full of modern sacks. He saw no reason to suppose that she would want anything different in her own house, and his only comfort was to reflect that she would probably let him arrange his library as he pleased, which would be, of course, with sincere east-lake furniture and the plain new bookcases without glass doors. The round bosomed maid came in, drew the curtains, pushed back a log, and said consolingly, Vera, Vera! When she had gone Archer stood up and began to wonder about, should he wait any longer? His position was becoming rather foolish. Perhaps he had misunderstood Madame Olenska. Perhaps she had not invited him after all. Down the cobblestones of the quiet street came the ring of a stepper's hoofs. They stopped before the house, and he caught the opening of a carriage door. Parting the curtains he looked out into the early dusk. A street lamp faced him, and in its light he saw Julius Boffert's compact English brome, drawn by a big rhone, and the banker descending from it and helping out Madame Olenska. Boffert stood, hat in hand, saying something which his companion seemed to negative. Then they shook hands and he jumped into his carriage while she mounted the steps. When she entered the room she showed no surprise at seeing Archer there. Surprise seemed the emotion that she was least addicted to. How do you like my funny house? she asked. To me it's like heaven. As she spoke she untied her little velvet bonnet and tossing it away with her long cloak stood looking at him with meditative eyes. You've arranged it delightfully, he rejoined, alive to the flatness of the words, but imprisoned in the conventional by his consuming desire to be simple and striking. Oh, it's a poor little place, my relations despise it, but at any rate it's less gloomy than the van der Leidens. The words gave him electric shock, for few were the rebellious spirits who would have dared to call the stately home of the van der Leidens gloomy. Those privileged to enter it shivered there and spoke of it as handsome, but suddenly he was glad that she had given voice to the general shiver. It's delicious what you've done here, he repeated. I like the little house, she admitted, but I suppose what I like is the blessedness of its being here in my own country and my own town, and then of being alone in it. She spoke so low that he hardly heard the last phrase, but in his awkwardness he took it up. You like so much to be alone? Yes, as long as my friends keep me from feeling lonely. She sat down near the fire and said, Nastasia will bring the tea presently, and signed to him to return to his arm-chair, adding, I see you've already chosen your corner.  This is the hour I like best, don't you? A proper sense of his dignity caused him to answer. I was afraid you'd forgotten the hour. Beaufort must have been very engrossing. She looked amused. Why, have you waited long? Mr. Beaufort took me to see a number of houses, since it seems I'm not to be allowed to stay in this one. She appeared to dismiss both Beaufort and himself from her mind and went on. I've never been in a city where there seems to be such a feeling against living in Descartiers-Entriques. What does it matter where one lives? I'm told this street is respectable. It's not fashionable. Fashionable! Do you all think so much of that? Why not make one's own fashions? But I suppose I've lived too independently. At any rate I want to do what you all do. I want to feel cared for and safe. He was touched, as he had been the evening before when she spoke of her need of guidance. That's what your friends want you to feel. New York's an awfully safe place. He added with a flash of sarcasm. Yes, isn't it? One feels that. She cried, missing the mockery. Being here is like—like—being taken on a holiday when one has been a good little girl and done all one's lessons. The analogy was well meant, but did not altogether please him. He did not mind being flippant about New York, but disliked to hear anyone else take the same tone. He wondered if she did not begin to see what a powerful engine it was and how nearly it had crushed her. The level Ming gets dinner, patched up in extremis out of all sorts of social odds and dens, ought to have taught her the narrowness of her escape. But either she'd been all along unaware of having skirted disaster or else she had lost sight of it in the triumph of the van der Leiden evening. Archer inclined to the former theory. He fancied that her New York was still completely undifferentiated, and the conjecture netled him. Last night, he said, New York laid itself out for you. The van der Leiden's do nothing by haves. No, how kind they are! It was such a nice party. Everyone seems to have such an esteem for them. The terms were hardly adequate. She might have spoken in that way of a tea party at the dear old Miss Lannings. The van der Leiden's, said Archer, feeling himself pompous as he spoke, are the most powerful influence in New York's society. Unfortunately, owing to her health, they received very seldom. She unclasped her hands from behind her head and looked at him meditatively. Isn't that perhaps the reason? The reason? For their great influence they make themselves so rare. He coloured a little, stared at her, and suddenly felt the penetration of the remark. At a stroke she had pricked the van der Leiden's and they had collapsed. He laughed and sacrificed them. Nastasia brought the tea with handilless Japanese cups and little covered dishes, placing the tray on a low table. But you'll explain these things to me. You'll tell me all I ought to know. Madame Olenska continued, leaning forward to hand him his cup. It's you who are telling me, opening my eyes to things I'd looked at so long that I'd ceased to see them. She detached a small gold cigarette case from one of her bracelets, held it out to him, and took a cigarette herself. On the chimney were long spills for lighting them. Ah! Then we can both help each other. But I want help so much more. You must tell me just what to do. It was on the tip of his tongue to reply, Don't be seen driving about the streets with Beaufort. But he was being too deeply drawn into the atmosphere of the room, which was her atmosphere, and to give advice of that sort would have been like telling someone who was bargaining for Atter of Roses in Samarkand that one should always be provided with arctics for a New York winter. New York seemed much farther off than Samarkand, and if they were indeed to help each other she was rendering what might prove the first of their mutual services by making him look at his native city objectively. Viewed thus as through the wrong end of a telescope, it looked disconcertingly small and distant. But then from Samarkand it would. A flame darted from the logs as she bent over the fire, stretching her thin hand so close to it that a faint halo shone about the oval nails. The light touched to russet the rings of dark hair escaping from her braids and made her pale face paler. There are plenty of people to tell you what to do. Archer adjoined, obscurely envious of them. Oh! all my aunts! had my dear old Granny. She considered the idea impartially. They're all a little vexed with me for setting up for myself. Poor Granny especially. She wanted to keep me with her. But I had to be free. He was impressed by this light way of speaking of the formidable Catherine and moved by the thought of what must have given Madame Olenska this thirst for even the loneliest kind of freedom. But the idea of Beaufort gnawed him. I think I understand how you feel, he said. Still, your family can advise you, explain differences, show you the way. She lifted her thin black eyebrows. Is New York such a labyrinth? I thought it so straight up and down, like Fifth Avenue, and with all the cross-streats numbered. She seemed to guess his faint disapproval of this and added, with the rare smile that enchanted her whole face. If you knew how I like it for just that, the straight up endownness and the big honest labels on everything. He saw his chance. Every thing may be labeled, but every body is not. Perhaps I may simplify too much, but you'll warn me if I do. She turned from the fire to look at him. There are only two people here who make me feel as if they understood what I mean and could explain things to me. You and Mr. Beaufort. Archer winced at the joining of the names, and then with a quick readjustment understood, sympathized, and pitied. So close to the powers of evil she must have lived that she still breathed more freely in their air. But since she felt that he understood her also, his business would be to make her see Beaufort as he really was, with all he represented, and abhor it. He answered gently, I understand, but just at first don't let go of your old friend's hands. I mean the older women, your Granny Mingot, Mrs. Welland, Mrs. Vanderleiden. They like and admire you. They want to help you. She shook her head and sighed, Oh, I know, I know. But on condition that they don't hear anything unpleasant, Aunt Welland put it in those very words when I tried, Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend. She lifted her hands to her face, and he saw her thin shoulders shaken by a sob. Madam Olenska! Oh, don't, Ellen! He cried, starting up and bending over her. He drew down one of her hands, clasping and chafing it like a child's while he murmured reassuring words, but in a moment she freed herself and looked up at him with wet lashes. Does no one cry here, either? I suppose there's no need to, in heaven. She said, straightening her loosened braids with a laugh and bending over the tea-kettle. It was burnt into his consciousness that he had called her, Ellen, called her so twice, and that she had not noticed it. Far down the inverted telescope he saw the faint white figure of May Welland in New York. Suddenly Nastasia put her head in to say something in her rich Italian. Madam Olenska, again with a hand at her hair, uttered an exclamation of assent, a flashing, Ja, Ja! and the Duke of St. Austrie entered, piloting a tremendous black-wigged and red-plumed lady in overflowing furs. My dear Countess, I've brought an old friend of mine to see you, Miss Struthers. She wasn't asked to the party last night, and she wants to know you. The Duke beamed on the group, and Madam Olenska advanced with a murmur of welcome toward the queer couple. She seemed to have no idea how oddly matched they were, nor would a liberty the Duke had taken in bringing his companion, and to do him justice, as Archer perceived, the Duke seemed as unaware of it himself. Of course I want to know you, my dear! cried Mrs. Struthers in a round rolling voice that matched her bold feathers and her brazen wig. I want to know everybody who's young and interesting and charming, and the Duke tells me you like music, didn't you, Duke?  Well, do you want to hear Sarasate play tomorrow evening at my house? You know I've something going on every Sunday evening. It's the day when New York doesn't know what to do with itself, so I say to it, come and be amused. And the Duke thought you'd be tempted by Sarasate. You'll find a number of your friends. Madam Olenska's face grew brilliant with pleasure. How kind! How good of the Duke to think of me! She pushed a chair up to the tea-table, and Mrs. Struthers sank into it delectably. Of course I shall be too happy to come. That's all right, my dear, and bring your young gentlemen with you. Mrs. Struthers extended a hail-fellow hand to Archer. I can't put a name to you, but I'm sure I've met you. I've met everybody, here or in Paris or London. Aren't you in diplomacy? All the diplomats come to me. You like music, too? Duke, you must be sure to bring him. The Duke said, rather, from the depths of his beard, and Archer withdrew with a stiffly circular bow that made him feel as full of spine as a self-conscious school-boy among careless and unnoticing elders. He was not sorry for the daynumont of his visit. He only wished it had come sooner, and spared him a certain waste of emotion. As he went out into the wintry night, New York again became vast and imminent, and may well end the loveliest woman in it. He turned into his florist to send her the daily box of lilies of the valley, which to his confusion he found he had forgotten that morning. As he wrote a word on his card and waited for an envelope, he glanced about the emboured shop, and his eye lit on a cluster of yellow roses. He had never seen any as Sun Golden before, and his first impulse was to send them to May instead of the lilies, but they did not look like her. There was something too rich, too strong, in their fiery beauty. In a sudden revulsion of mood, and almost without knowing what he did, he signed to the florist to lay the roses in another long box, and slipped his card into a second envelope, on which he wrote the name of the Countess Olenska, and then, just as he was turning away, he drew the card out again, and left the empty envelope on the box. They'll go at once," he inquired, pointing to the roses. The florist assured him that they would. CHAPTER X The next day he persuaded May to escape for a walk in the park after luncheon. As was the custom in old-fashioned Episcopalian New York, she usually accompanied her parents to church on Sunday afternoons, but Mrs. Welland condoned her truancy, having that very morning won her over to the necessity of a long engagement, with time to prepare a hand-embroider trusso containing the proper number of dozens. The day was delectable. The bare vanting of trees along the mall was sealed with lapis lazuli, and arched above snow that shone like splintered crystals. It was the weather to call out May's radiance, and she burned like a young maple in the frost. Archer was proud of the glances turned on her, and the simple joy of possessorship cleared away his underlying perplexities. It's so delicious! Waking every morning to smell lily of the valley in one's room, she said. Yesterday they came late. I hadn't time in the morning. But you're remembering each day to send them makes me love them so much more than if you'd given a standing order and they came every morning on the minute, like one's music-teacher, as I know Gertrude Lefferts did, for instance, when she and Lawrence were engaged. Ha! they would! laughed Archer, amused at her keenness. He looked sideways at her fruit-like cheek and felt rich and secure enough to add— When I sent your lilies yesterday afternoon I saw some rather gorgeous yellow roses and packed them off to Madame Olenska. Was that right? How dear of you! Anything of that kind delights her. It's odd she didn't mention it. She lunched with us today and spoke of Mr. Beaufort's having sent her wonderful orchids and cousin Henry van der Leiden a whole hamper of carnations from Skydercliff. She seems so surprised to receive flowers. Don't people send them in Europe? She thinks it's such a pretty custom. Oh, well! No wonder mine were overshadowed by Beaufort's, said Archer, irritably. Then he remembered that he had not put a card with the roses and was vexed at having spoken of them. He wanted to say—I called on your cousin yesterday—but hesitated. If Madame Olenska had not spoken of his visit it might seem awkward that he should. Yet not to do so gave the affair an air of mystery that he disliked. To shake off the question he began to talk of their own plans, their future, and Mrs. Welland's insistence on a long engagement. If you call it long, Isabelle Chivers and Reggie were engaged for two years, graced in Thorly for nearly a year and a half. Why aren't we very well off as we are? It was the traditional maidenly interrogation, and he felt ashamed of himself for finding it singularly childish. No doubt she simply echoed what was said for her, but she was nearing her twenty-second birthday, and he wondered at what age nice women began to speak for themselves. Never, if we won't let them, I suppose, he mused, and recalled his mad outburst to Mr. Sillerton Jackson, women ought to be as free as we are. It would presently be his task to take the bandage from this young woman's eyes and bid her look forth on the world. But how many generations of the women who had gone to her making had descended bandage to the family vault? He shivered a little, remembering some of the new ideas in his scientific books and the much-sighted instance of the Kentucky cave-fish which had ceased to develop eyes because they had no use for them. What if, when he had bidden may well and to open hers, they could look only out bl