own, 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've 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. Mingott had always professed
a great admiration for Julius Beaufort, and there was a kind of kinship
in their cool domineering way and their short-cuts 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's 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 Olenska 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 Olenska's eyes to her lips: she looked
younger, more like the bold brown Ellen Mingott 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. Mingott, of her age, her spirit, and all her wonderful attributes.
No one alluded to Ellen Olenska; 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 at 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 daresay 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 abou