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twist, and said simply: "I didn't think the Mingotts would have tried
it on."
II.
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 Mingotts 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 Mingotts 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 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 Mingotts 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 marquis and an English banker), and put the crowning touch to
her audacities by building a large house of pale cream-c
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