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 des quartiers excentriques. 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 any one
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
Lovell Mingotts' dinner, patched up in extremis out of all sorts of
social odds and ends, ought to have taught her the narrowness of her
escape; but either she had been all along unaware of having skirted
disaster, or else she had lost sight of it in the triumph of the van
der Luyden evening. Archer inclined to the former theory; he fancied
that her New York was still completely undifferentiated, and the
conjecture nettled him.

"Last night," he said, "New York laid itself out for you. The van der
Luydens do nothing by halves."

"No: how kind they are! It was such a nice party. Every one 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 Luydens," said Archer, feeling himself pompous as he
spoke, "are the most powerful influence in New York society.
Unfortunately--owing to her health--they receive 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; that 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 pricke