ll over her blushes! What--can't I say that either? Mercy me--when
my children beg me to have all those gods and goddesses painted out
overhead I always say I'm too thankful to have somebody about me that
NOTHING can shock!"

Archer burst into a laugh, and May echoed it, crimson to the eyes.

"Well, now tell me all about the party, please, my dears, for I shall
never get a straight word about it out of that silly Medora," the
ancestress continued; and, as May exclaimed: "Cousin Medora? But I
thought she was going back to Portsmouth?" she answered placidly: "So
she is--but she's got to come here first to pick up Ellen. Ah--you
didn't know Ellen had come to spend the day with me? Such fol-de-rol,
her not coming for the summer; but I gave up arguing with young people
about fifty years ago. Ellen--ELLEN!" she cried in her shrill old
voice, trying to bend forward far enough to catch a glimpse of the lawn
beyond the verandah.

There was no answer, and Mrs. Mingott rapped impatiently with her stick
on the shiny floor. A mulatto maid-servant in a bright turban,
replying to the summons, informed her mistress that she had seen "Miss
Ellen" going down the path to the shore; and Mrs. Mingott turned to
Archer.

"Run down and fetch her, like a good grandson; this pretty lady will
describe the party to me," she said; and Archer stood up as if in a
dream.

He had heard the Countess Olenska's name pronounced often enough during
the year and a half since they had last met, and was even familiar with
the main incidents of her life in the interval. He knew that she had
spent the previous summer at Newport, where she appeared to have gone a
great deal into society, but that in the autumn she had suddenly
sub-let the "perfect house" which Beaufort had been at such pains to
find for her, and decided to establish herself in Washington. There,
during the winter, he had heard of her (as one always heard of pretty
women in Washington) as shining in the "brilliant diplomatic society"
that was supposed to make up for the social short-comings of the
Administration. He had listened to these accounts, and to various
contradictory reports on her appearance, her conversation, her point of
view and her choice of friends, with the detachment with which one
listens to reminiscences of some one long since dead; not till Medora
suddenly spoke her name at the archery match had Ellen Olenska become a
living presence to him again. The Marchion