there in Granny's carriage! I'm afraid she's quite
alienated the van der Luydens ..."

"Ah," said Archer with an impatient laugh. The open door had closed
between them again.

"It's time to dress; we're dining out, aren't we?" he asked, moving
from the fire.

She rose also, but lingered near the hearth. As he walked past her she
moved forward impulsively, as though to detain him: their eyes met, and
he saw that hers were of the same swimming blue as when he had left her
to drive to Jersey City.

She flung her arms about his neck and pressed her cheek to his.

"You haven't kissed me today," she said in a whisper; and he felt her
tremble in his arms.

XXXII.

"At the court of the Tuileries," said Mr. Sillerton Jackson with his
reminiscent smile, "such things were pretty openly tolerated."

The scene was the van der Luydens' black walnut dining-room in Madison
Avenue, and the time the evening after Newland Archer's visit to the
Museum of Art. Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden had come to town for a few
days from Skuytercliff, whither they had precipitately fled at the
announcement of Beaufort's failure. It had been represented to them
that the disarray into which society had been thrown by this deplorable
affair made their presence in town more necessary than ever. It was
one of the occasions when, as Mrs. Archer put it, they "owed it to
society" to show themselves at the Opera, and even to open their own
doors.

"It will never do, my dear Louisa, to let people like Mrs. Lemuel
Struthers think they can step into Regina's shoes. It is just at such
times that new people push in and get a footing. It was owing to the
epidemic of chicken-pox in New York the winter Mrs. Struthers first
appeared that the married men slipped away to her house while their
wives were in the nursery. You and dear Henry, Louisa, must stand in
the breach as you always have."

Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden could not remain deaf to such a call, and
reluctantly but heroically they had come to town, unmuffled the house,
and sent out invitations for two dinners and an evening reception.

On this particular evening they had invited Sillerton Jackson, Mrs.
Archer and Newland and his wife to go with them to the Opera, where
Faust was being sung for the first time that winter. Nothing was done
without ceremony under the van der Luyden roof, and though there were
but four guests the repast had begun at seven punctually, so that the
proper