“Before taking him down to Maryland we are
inviting a few friends to meet him here—only
a little dinner—with a reception afterward.
I am sure Louisa will be as glad as I am if Countess
Olenska will let us include her among our guests.”
He got up, bent his long body with a stiff friendliness
toward his cousin, and added: “I think
I have Louisa’s authority for saying that she
will herself leave the invitation to dine when she
drives out presently: with our cards—of
course with our cards.”
Mrs. Archer, who knew this to be a hint that the
seventeen-hand chestnuts which were never kept waiting
were at the door, rose with a hurried murmur of thanks.
Mrs. van der Luyden beamed on her with the smile
of Esther interceding with Ahasuerus; but her husband
raised a protesting hand.
“There is nothing to thank me for, dear Adeline;
nothing whatever. This kind of thing must not
happen in New York; it shall not, as long as I can
help it,” he pronounced with sovereign gentleness
as he steered his cousins to the door.
Two hours later, every one knew that the great C-spring
barouche in which Mrs. van der Luyden took the air
at all seasons had been seen at old Mrs. Mingott’s
door, where a large square envelope was handed in;
and that evening at the Opera Mr. Sillerton Jackson
was able to state that the envelope contained a card
inviting the Countess Olenska to the dinner which
the van der Luydens were giving the following week
for their cousin, the Duke of St. Austrey.
Some of the younger men in the club box exchanged
a smile at this announcement, and glanced sideways
at Lawrence Lefferts, who sat carelessly in the front
of the box, pulling his long fair moustache, and who
remarked with authority, as the soprano paused:
“No one but Patti ought to attempt the Sonnambula.”
It was generally agreed in New York that the Countess
Olenska had “lost her looks.”
She had appeared there first, in Newland Archer’s
boyhood, as a brilliantly pretty little girl of nine
or ten, of whom people said that she “ought
to be painted.” Her parents had been continental
wanderers, and after a roaming babyhood she had lost
them both, and been taken in charge by her aunt, Medora
Manson, also a wanderer, who was herself returning
to New York to “settle down.”
Poor Medora, repeatedly widowed, was always coming
home to settle down (each time in a less expensive
house), and bringing with her a new husband or an
adopted child; but after a few months she invariably
parted from her husband or quarrelled with her ward,
and, having got rid of her house at a loss, set out
again on her wanderings. As her mother had been
a Rushworth, and her last unhappy marriage had linked
her to one of the crazy Chiverses, New York looked
indulgently on her eccentricities; but when she returned
with her little orphaned niece, whose parents had
been popular in spite of their regrettable taste for
travel, people thought it a pity that the pretty child
should be in such hands.
