leasant a way of spending the summer. She reminded
him that he had always liked Newport in his bachelor days, and as this
was indisputable he could only profess that he was sure he was going to
like it better than ever now that they were to be there together. But
as he stood on the Beaufort verandah and looked out on the brightly
peopled lawn it came home to him with a shiver that he was not going to
like it at all.

It was not May's fault, poor dear. If, now and then, during their
travels, they had fallen slightly out of step, harmony had been
restored by their return to the conditions she was used to. He had
always foreseen that she would not disappoint him; and he had been
right. He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a
perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless
sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she had
represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of
an unescapable duty.

He could not say that he had been mistaken in his choice, for she had
fulfilled all that he had expected. It was undoubtedly gratifying to
be the husband of one of the handsomest and most popular young married
women in New York, especially when she was also one of the
sweetest-tempered and most reasonable of wives; and Archer had never
been insensible to such advantages. As for the momentary madness which
had fallen upon him on the eve of his marriage, he had trained himself
to regard it as the last of his discarded experiments. The idea that
he could ever, in his senses, have dreamed of marrying the Countess
Olenska had become almost unthinkable, and she remained in his memory
simply as the most plaintive and poignant of a line of ghosts.

But all these abstractions and eliminations made of his mind a rather
empty and echoing place, and he supposed that was one of the reasons
why the busy animated people on the Beaufort lawn shocked him as if
they had been children playing in a grave-yard.

He heard a murmur of skirts beside him, and the Marchioness Manson
fluttered out of the drawing-room window. As usual, she was
extraordinarily festooned and bedizened, with a limp Leghorn hat
anchored to her head by many windings of faded gauze, and a little
black velvet parasol on a carved ivory handle absurdly balanced over
her much larger hatbrim.

"My dear Newland, I had no idea that you and May had arrived! You
yourself came only yesterday, you say