e Archer dining-room. Mrs. Archer raised her delicate
eye-brows in the particular curve that signified: "The butler--" and
the young man, himself mindful of the bad taste of discussing such
intimate matters in public, hastily branched off into an account of his
visit to old Mrs. Mingott.

After dinner, according to immemorial custom, Mrs. Archer and Janey
trailed their long silk draperies up to the drawing-room, where, while
the gentlemen smoked below stairs, they sat beside a Carcel lamp with
an engraved globe, facing each other across a rosewood work-table with
a green silk bag under it, and stitched at the two ends of a tapestry
band of field-flowers destined to adorn an "occasional" chair in the
drawing-room of young Mrs. Newland Archer.

While this rite was in progress in the drawing-room, Archer settled Mr.
Jackson in an armchair near the fire in the Gothic library and handed
him a cigar. Mr. Jackson sank into the armchair with satisfaction, lit
his cigar with perfect confidence (it was Newland who bought them), and
stretching his thin old ankles to the coals, said: "You say the
secretary merely helped her to get away, my dear fellow? Well, he was
still helping her a year later, then; for somebody met 'em living at
Lausanne together."

Newland reddened. "Living together? Well, why not? Who had the right
to make her life over if she hadn't? I'm sick of the hypocrisy that
would bury alive a woman of her age if her husband prefers to live with
harlots."

He stopped and turned away angrily to light his cigar. "Women ought to
be free--as free as we are," he declared, making a discovery of which
he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences.

Mr. Sillerton Jackson stretched his ankles nearer the coals and emitted
a sardonic whistle.

"Well," he said after a pause, "apparently Count Olenski takes your
view; for I never heard of his having lifted a finger to get his wife
back."

VI.

That evening, after Mr. Jackson had taken himself away, and the ladies
had retired to their chintz-curtained bedroom, Newland Archer mounted
thoughtfully to his own study. A vigilant hand had, as usual, kept the
fire alive and the lamp trimmed; and the room, with its rows and rows
of books, its bronze and steel statuettes of "The Fencers" on the
mantelpiece and its many photographs of famous pictures, looked
singularly home-like and welcoming.

As he dropped into his armchair near the fire his eyes reste