The following text is from Edith Wharton’s 1905 novel The House of Mirth. Lily Bart and a companion are walking through a
park.
Lily had no real intimacy with nature, but she had a passion for the appropriate and could be keenly sensitive to a scene
which was the ﬁtting background of her own sensations. The landscape outspread below her seemed an enlargement of
her present mood, and she found something of herself in its calmness, its breadth, its long free reaches. On the nearer
slopes the sugar-maples wavered like pyres of light; lower down was a massing of grey orchards, and here and there the
lingering green of an oak-grove.
It creates a detailed image of the physical setting of the scene.
It establishes that a character is experiencing an internal conﬂict.
It makes an assertion that the next sentence then expands on.
It illustrates an idea that is introduced in the previous sentence.
Choice D is the best answer because it best describes how the underlined sentence functions in the text as a whole. The ﬁrst
sentence of the text establishes that Lily can be “keenly sensitive to” scenes that serve as a “ﬁtting background” for her
feelings—that is, she’s very aware of when a setting seems to reﬂect her mood. The next sentence, which is underlined, then
demonstrates this awareness: Lily views the landscape she’s in as a large-scale reﬂection of her current mood, identifying
with elements such as its calmness. Thus, the function of the underlined sentence is to illustrate an idea introduced in the
previous sentence.
Choice A is incorrect because the underlined sentence describes the scene only in very general terms, referring to its
calmness, breadth, and long stretches of land. It’s the next sentence that adds speciﬁc details about colors, light, and various
trees nearby. Choice B is incorrect because nothing in the underlined sentence suggests that Lily is experiencing an internal
conﬂict. In fact, the sentence indicates that Lily thinks the landscape reﬂects her own feeling of calmness. Choice C is
incorrect because the only assertion in the underlined sentence is that Lily feels that broad aspects of the landscape, such
as its calmness, reﬂect her current mood, and that assertion isn’t expanded on in the next sentence. Instead, the next
sentence describes speciﬁc details of the scene without connecting them to Lily’s feelings.