Chapter: The blinds of Mrs. Peniston's drawing-room were drawn down against the
oppressive June sun, and in the sultry twilight the faces of her
assembled relatives took on a fitting shadow of bereavement. They were
all there: Van Alstynes, Stepneys and Melsons--even a stray Peniston or
two, indicating, by a greater latitude in dress and manner, the fact of
remoter relationship and more settled hopes. The Peniston side was, in
fact, secure in the knowledge that the bulk of Mr. Peniston's property
"went back"; while the direct connection hung suspended on the disposal
of his widow's private fortune and on the uncertainty of its extent.
Jack Stepney, in his new character as the richest nephew, tacitly took
the lead, emphasizing his importance by the deeper gloss of his mourning
and the subdued authority of his manner; while his wife's bored attitude
and frivolous gown proclaimed the heiress's disregard of the
insignificant interests at stake. Old Ned Van Alstyne, seated next to her
in a coat that made affliction dapper, twirled his white moustache to
conceal the eager twitch of his lips; and Grace Stepney, red-nosed and
smelling of crape, whispered emotionally to Mrs. Herbert Melson: "I
couldn't BEAR to see the Niagara anywhere else!"

A rustle of weeds and quick turning of heads hailed the opening of the
door, and Lily Bart appeared, tall and noble in her black dress, with
Gerty Farish at her side. The women's faces, as she paused
interrogatively on the threshold, were a study in hesitation. One or two
made faint motions of recognition, which might have been subdued either
by the solemnity of the scene, or by the doubt as to how far the others
meant to go; Mrs. Jack Stepney gave a careless nod, and Grace Stepney,
with a sepulchral gesture, indicated a seat at her side. But Lily,
ignoring the invitation, as well as Jack Stepney's official attempt to
direct her, moved across the room with her smooth free gait, and seated
herself in a chair which seemed to have been purposely placed apart from
the others.

It was the first time that she had faced her family since her return from
Europe, two weeks earlier; but if she perceived any uncertainty in their
welcome, it served only to add a tinge of irony to the usual composure of
her bearing. The shock of dismay with which, on the dock, she had heard
from Gerty Farish of Mrs. Peniston's sudden death, had been mitigated,
almost at once, by the irrepressible thought that now, at last, she would
be able to pay her debts. She had looked forward with considerable
uneasiness to her first encounter with her aunt.  Mrs. Peniston had
vehemently opposed her niece's departure with the Dorsets, and had marked
her continued disapproval by not writing during Lily's absence. The
certainty that she had heard of the rupture with the Dorsets made the
prospect of the meeting more formidable; and how should Lily have
repressed a quick sense of relief at the thought that, instead of
undergoing the anticipated ordeal, she had only to enter gracefully on a
long-assured inheritance? It had been, in the consecrated phrase, "always
understood" that Mrs. Peniston was to provide handsomely for her niece;
and in the latter's mind the understanding had long since crystallized
into fact.

"She gets everything, of course--I don't see what we're here for," Mrs.
Jack Stepney remarked with careless loudness to Ned Van Alstyne; and the
latter's deprecating murmur--"Julia was always a just woman"--might have
been interpreted as signifying either acquiescence or doubt.

"Well, it's only about four hundred thousand," Mrs. Stepney rejoined with
a yawn; and Grace Stepney, in the silence produced by the lawyer's
preliminary cough, was heard to sob out: "They won't find a towel
missing--I went over them with her the very day----"

Lily, oppressed by the close atmosphere, and the stifling odour of fresh
mourning, felt her attention straying as Mrs. Peniston's lawyer, solemnly
erect behind the Buhl table at the end of the room, began to rattle
through the preamble of the will.

"It's like being in church," she reflected, wondering vaguely where Gwen
Stepney had got such an awful hat. Then she noticed how stout Jack had
grown--he would soon be almost as plethoric as Herbert Melson, who sat a
few feet off, breathing puffily as he leaned his black-gloved hands on
his stick.

"I wonder why rich people always grow fat--I suppose it's because there's
nothing to worry them. If I inherit, I shall have to be careful of my
figure," she mused, while the lawyer droned on through a labyrinth of
legacies. The servants came first, then a few charitable institutions,
then several remoter Melsons and Stepneys, who stirred consciously as
their names rang out, and then subsided into a state of impassiveness
befitting the solemnity of the occasion. Ned Van Alstyne, Jack Stepney,
and a cousin or two followed, each coupled with the mention of a few
thousands: Lily wondered that Grace Stepney was not among them.  Then she
heard her own name--"to my niece Lily Bart ten thousand dollars--" and
after that the lawyer again lost himself in a coil of unintelligible
periods, from which the concluding phrase flashed out with startling
distinctness: "and the residue of my estate to my dear cousin and
name-sake, Grace Julia Stepney."

There was a subdued gasp of surprise, a rapid turning of heads, and a
surging of sable figures toward the corner in which Miss Stepney wailed
out her sense of unworthiness through the crumpled ball of a black-edged
handkerchief.

Lily stood apart from the general movement, feeling herself for the first
time utterly alone. No one looked at her, no one seemed aware of her
presence; she was probing the very depths of insignificance. And under
her sense of the collective indifference came the acuter pang of hopes
deceived.  Disinherited--she had been disinherited--and for Grace
Stepney!  She met Gerty's lamentable eyes, fixed on her in a despairing
effort at consolation, and the look brought her to herself. There was
something to be done before she left the house: to be done with all the
nobility she knew how to put into such gestures. She advanced to the
group about Miss Stepney, and holding out her hand said simply: "Dear
Grace, I am so glad."

The other ladies had fallen back at her approach, and a space created
itself about her. It widened as she turned to go, and no one advanced to
fill it up. She paused a moment, glancing about her, calmly taking the
measure of her situation. She heard some one ask a question about the
date of the will; she caught a fragment of the lawyer's answer--something
about a sudden summons, and an "earlier instrument." Then the tide of
dispersal began to drift past her; Mrs. Jack Stepney and Mrs. Herbert
Melson stood on the doorstep awaiting their motor; a sympathizing group
escorted Grace Stepney to the cab it was felt to be fitting she should
take, though she lived but a street or two away; and Miss Bart and Gerty
found themselves almost alone in the purple drawing-room, which more than
ever, in its stuffy dimness, resembled a well-kept family vault, in which
the last corpse had just been decently deposited.



In Gerty Farish's sitting-room, whither a hansom had carried the two
friends, Lily dropped into a chair with a faint sound of laughter: it
struck her as a humorous coincidence that her aunt's legacy should so
nearly represent the amount of her debt to Trenor. The need of
discharging that debt had reasserted itself with increased urgency since
her return to America, and she spoke her first thought in saying to the
anxiously hovering Gerty: "I wonder when the legacies will be paid."

But Miss Farish could not pause over the legacies; she broke into a
larger indignation. "Oh, Lily, it's unjust; it's cruel--Grace Stepney
must FEEL she has no right to all that money!"

"Any one who knew how to please Aunt Julia has a right to her money,"
Miss Bart rejoined philosophically.

"But she was devoted to you--she led every one to think--" Gerty checked
herself in evident embarrassment, and Miss Bart turned to her with a
direct look. "Gerty, be honest: this will was made only six weeks ago.
She had heard of my break with the Dorsets?"

"Every one heard, of course, that there had been some disagreement--some
misunderstanding----"

"Did she hear that Bertha turned me off the yacht?"

"Lily!"

"That was what happened, you know. She said I was trying to marry George
Dorset. She did it to make him think she was jealous.  Isn't that what
she told Gwen Stepney?"

"I don't know--I don't listen to such horrors."

"I MUST listen to them--I must know where I stand." She paused, and again
sounded a faint note of derision. "Did you notice the women? They were
afraid to snub me while they thought I was going to get the
money--afterward they scuttled off as if I had the plague." Gerty
remained silent, and she continued: "I stayed on to see what would
happen. They took their cue from Gwen Stepney and Lulu Melson--I saw them
watching to see what Gwen would do.--Gerty, I must know just what is
being said of me."

"I tell you I don't listen----"

"One hears such things without listening." She rose and laid her resolute
hands on Miss Farish's shoulders. "Gerty, are people going to cut me?"

"Your FRIENDS, Lily--how can you think it?"

"Who are one's friends at such a time? Who, but you, you poor trustful
darling? And heaven knows what YOU suspect me of!" She kissed Gerty with
a whimsical murmur. "You'd never let it make any difference--but then
you're fond of criminals, Gerty! How about the irreclaimable ones,
though? For I'm absolutely impenitent, you know."

She drew herself up to the full height of her slender majesty, towering
like some dark angel of defiance above the troubled Gerty, who could only
falter out: "Lily, Lily--how can you laugh about such things?"

"So as not to weep, perhaps. But no--I'm not of the tearful order. I
discovered early that crying makes my nose red, and the knowledge has
helped me through several painful episodes." She took a restless turn
about the room, and then, reseating herself, lifted the bright mockery of
her eyes to Gerty's anxious countenance.

"I shouldn't have minded, you know, if I'd got the money--" and at Miss
Farish's protesting "Oh!" she repeated calmly: "Not a straw, my dear;
for, in the first place, they wouldn't have quite dared to ignore me; and
if they had, it wouldn't have mattered, because I should have been
independent of them. But now--!" The irony faded from her eyes, and she
bent a clouded face upon her friend.

"How can you talk so, Lily? Of course the money ought to have been yours,
but after all that makes no difference. The important thing----" Gerty
paused, and then continued firmly: "The important thing is that you
should clear yourself--should tell your friends the whole truth."

"The whole truth?" Miss Bart laughed. "What is truth? Where a woman is
concerned, it's the story that's easiest to believe. In this case it's a
great deal easier to believe Bertha Dorset's story than mine, because she
has a big house and an opera box, and it's convenient to be on good terms
with her."

Miss Farish still fixed her with an anxious gaze. "But what IS your
story, Lily? I don't believe any one knows it yet."

"My story?--I don't believe I know it myself. You see I never thought of
preparing a version in advance as Bertha did--and if I had, I don't think
I should take the trouble to use it now."

But Gerty continued with her quiet reasonableness: "I don't want a
version prepared in advance--but I want you to tell me exactly what
happened from the beginning."

"From the beginning?" Miss Bart gently mimicked her. "Dear Gerty, how
little imagination you good people have! Why, the beginning was in my
cradle, I suppose--in the way I was brought up, and the things I was
taught to care for. Or no--I won't blame anybody for my faults: I'll say
it was in my blood, that I got it from some wicked pleasure-loving
ancestress, who reacted against the homely virtues of New Amsterdam, and
wanted to be back at the court of the Charleses!" And as Miss Farish
continued to press her with troubled eyes, she went on impatiently: "You
asked me just now for the truth--well, the truth about any girl is that
once she's talked about she's done for; and the more she explains her
case the worse it looks.--My good Gerty, you don't happen to have a
cigarette about you?"



In her stuffy room at the hotel to which she had gone on landing, Lily
Bart that evening reviewed her situation. It was the last week in June,
and none of her friends were in town. The few relatives who had stayed
on, or returned, for the reading of Mrs. Peniston's will, had taken
flight again that afternoon to Newport or Long Island; and not one of
them had made any proffer of hospitality to Lily. For the first time in
her life she found herself utterly alone except for Gerty Farish. Even at
the actual moment of her break with the Dorsets she had not had so keen a
sense of its consequences, for the Duchess of Beltshire, hearing of the
catastrophe from Lord Hubert, had instantly offered her protection, and
under her sheltering wing Lily had made an almost triumphant progress to
London. There she had been sorely tempted to linger on in a society which
asked of her only to amuse and charm it, without enquiring too curiously
how she had acquired her gift for doing so; but Selden, before they
parted, had pressed on her the urgent need of returning at once to her
aunt, and Lord Hubert, when he presently reappeared in London, abounded
in the same counsel. Lily did not need to be told that the Duchess's
championship was not the best road to social rehabilitation, and as she
was besides aware that her noble defender might at any moment drop her in
favour of a new PROTEGEE, she reluctantly decided to return to America.
But she had not been ten minutes on her native shore before she realized
that she had delayed too long to regain it. The Dorsets, the Stepneys,
the Brys--all the actors and witnesses in the miserable drama--had
preceded her with their version of the case; and, even had she seen the
least chance of gaining a hearing for her own, some obscure disdain and
reluctance would have restrained her.  She knew it was not by
explanations and counter-charges that she could ever hope to recover her
lost standing; but even had she felt the least trust in their efficacy,
she would still have been held back by the feeling which had kept her
from defending herself to Gerty Farish--a feeling that was half pride and
half humiliation. For though she knew she had been ruthlessly sacrificed
to Bertha Dorset's determination to win back her husband, and though her
own relation to Dorset had been that of the merest good-fellowship, yet
she had been perfectly aware from the outset that her part in the affair
was, as Carry Fisher brutally put it, to distract Dorset's attention from
his wife.  That was what she was "there for": it was the price she had
chosen to pay for three months of luxury and freedom from care.  Her
habit of resolutely facing the facts, in her rare moments of
introspection, did not now allow her to put any false gloss on the
situation. She had suffered for the very faithfulness with which she had
carried out her part of the tacit compact, but the part was not a
handsome one at best, and she saw it now in all the ugliness of failure.

She saw, too, in the same uncompromising light, the train of consequences
resulting from that failure; and these became clearer to her with every
day of her weary lingering in town. She stayed on partly for the comfort
of Gerty Farish's nearness, and partly for lack of knowing where to go.
She understood well enough the nature of the task before her. She must
set out to regain, little by little, the position she had lost; and the
first step in the tedious task was to find out, as soon as possible, on
how many of her friends she could count. Her hopes were mainly centred on
Mrs. Trenor, who had treasures of easy-going tolerance for those who were
amusing or useful to her, and in the noisy rush of whose existence the
still small voice of detraction was slow to make itself heard. But Judy,
though she must have been apprised of Miss Bart's return, had not even
recognized it by the formal note of condolence which her friend's
bereavement demanded.  Any advance on Lily's side might have been
perilous: there was nothing to do but to trust to the happy chance of an
accidental meeting, and Lily knew that, even so late in the season, there
was always a hope of running across her friends in their frequent
passages through town.

To this end she assiduously showed herself at the restaurants they
frequented, where, attended by the troubled Gerty, she lunched
luxuriously, as she said, on her expectations.

"My dear Gerty, you wouldn't have me let the head-waiter see that I've
nothing to live on but Aunt Julia's legacy? Think of Grace Stepney's
satisfaction if she came in and found us lunching on cold mutton and tea!
What sweet shall we have today, dear--COUPE JACQUES or PECHES A LA MELBA?"

She dropped the MENU abruptly, with a quick heightening of colour, and
Gerty, following her glance, was aware of the advance, from an inner
room, of a party headed by Mrs. Trenor and Carry Fisher. It was
impossible for these ladies and their companions--among whom Lily had at
once distinguished both Trenor and Rosedale--not to pass, in going out,
the table at which the two girls were seated; and Gerty's sense of the
fact betrayed itself in the helpless trepidation of her manner.  Miss
Bart, on the contrary, borne forward on the wave of her buoyant grace,
and neither shrinking from her friends nor appearing to lie in wait for
them, gave to the encounter the touch of naturalness which she could
impart to the most strained situations. Such embarrassment as was shown
was on Mrs. Trenor's side, and manifested itself in the mingling of
exaggerated warmth with imperceptible reservations. Her loudly affirmed
pleasure at seeing Miss Bart took the form of a nebulous generalization,
which included neither enquiries as to her future nor the expression of a
definite wish to see her again. Lily, well-versed in the language of
these omissions, knew that they were equally intelligible to the other
members of the party: even Rosedale, flushed as he was with the
importance of keeping such company, at once took the temperature of Mrs.
Trenor's cordiality, and reflected it in his off-hand greeting of Miss
Bart. Trenor, red and uncomfortable, had cut short his salutations on the
pretext of a word to say to the head-waiter; and the rest of the group
soon melted away in Mrs. Trenor's wake.

It was over in a moment--the waiter, MENU in hand, still hung on the
result of the choice between COUPE JACQUES and PECHES A LA MELBA--but
Miss Bart, in the interval, had taken the measure of her fate. Where Judy
Trenor led, all the world would follow; and Lily had the doomed sense of
the castaway who has signalled in vain to fleeing sails.

In a flash she remembered Mrs. Trenor's complaints of Carry Fisher's
rapacity, and saw that they denoted an unexpected acquaintance with her
husband's private affairs. In the large tumultuous disorder of the life
at Bellomont, where no one seemed to have time to observe any one else,
and private aims and personal interests were swept along unheeded in the
rush of collective activities, Lily had fancied herself sheltered from
inconvenient scrutiny; but if Judy knew when Mrs. Fisher borrowed money
of her husband, was she likely to ignore the same transaction on Lily's
part? If she was careless of his affections she was plainly jealous of
his pocket; and in that fact Lily read the explanation of her rebuff. The
immediate result of these conclusions was the passionate resolve to pay
back her debt to Trenor. That obligation discharged, she would have but a
thousand dollars of Mrs. Peniston's legacy left, and nothing to live on
but her own small income, which was considerably less than Gerty Farish's
wretched pittance; but this consideration gave way to the imperative
claim of her wounded pride.  She must be quits with the Trenors first;
after that she would take thought for the future.

In her ignorance of legal procrastinations she had supposed that her
legacy would be paid over within a few days of the reading of her aunt's
will; and after an interval of anxious suspense, she wrote to enquire the
cause of the delay. There was another interval before Mrs. Peniston's
lawyer, who was also one of the executors, replied to the effect that,
some questions having arisen relative to the interpretation of the will,
he and his associates might not be in a position to pay the legacies till
the close of the twelvemonth legally allotted for their settlement.
Bewildered and indignant, Lily resolved to try the effect of a personal
appeal; but she returned from her expedition with a sense of the
powerlessness of beauty and charm against the unfeeling processes of the
law. It seemed intolerable to live on for another year under the weight
of her debt; and in her extremity she decided to turn to Miss Stepney,
who still lingered in town, immersed in the delectable duty of "going
over" her benefactress's effects. It was bitter enough for Lily to ask a
favour of Grace Stepney, but the alternative was bitterer still; and one
morning she presented herself at Mrs. Peniston's, where Grace, for the
facilitation of her pious task, had taken up a provisional abode.

The strangeness of entering as a suppliant the house where she had so
long commanded, increased Lily's desire to shorten the ordeal; and when
Miss Stepney entered the darkened drawing-room, rustling with the best
quality of crape, her visitor went straight to the point: would she be
willing to advance the amount of the expected legacy?

Grace, in reply, wept and wondered at the request, bemoaned the
inexorableness of the law, and was astonished that Lily had not realized
the exact similarity of their positions. Did she think that only the
payment of the legacies had been delayed? Why, Miss Stepney herself had
not received a penny of her inheritance, and was paying rent--yes,
actually!--for the privilege of living in a house that belonged to her.
She was sure it was not what poor dear cousin Julia would have
wished--she had told the executors so to their faces; but they were
inaccessible to reason, and there was nothing to do but to wait. Let Lily
take example by her, and be patient--let them both remember how
beautifully patient cousin Julia had always been.

Lily made a movement which showed her imperfect assimilation of this
example. "But you will have everything, Grace--it would be easy for you
to borrow ten times the amount I am asking for."

"Borrow--easy for me to borrow?" Grace Stepney rose up before her in
sable wrath. "Do you imagine for a moment that I would raise money on my
expectations from cousin Julia, when I know so well her unspeakable
horror of every transaction of the sort? Why, Lily, if you must know the
truth, it was the idea of your being in debt that brought on her
illness--you remember she had a slight attack before you sailed. Oh, I
don't know the particulars, of course--I don't WANT to know them--but
there were rumours about your affairs that made her most unhappy--no one
could be with her without seeing that. I can't help it if you are
offended by my telling you this now--if I can do anything to make you
realize the folly of your course, and how deeply SHE disapproved of it, I
shall feel it is the truest way of making up to you for her loss."



It seemed to Lily, as Mrs. Peniston's door closed on her, that she was
taking a final leave of her old life. The future stretched before her
dull and bare as the deserted length of Fifth Avenue, and opportunities
showed as meagrely as the few cabs trailing in quest of fares that did
not come. The completeness of the analogy was, however, disturbed as she
reached the sidewalk by the rapid approach of a hansom which pulled up at
sight of her.

From beneath its luggage-laden top, she caught the wave of a signalling
hand; and the next moment Mrs. Fisher, springing to the street, had
folded her in a demonstrative embrace.

"My dear, you don't mean to say you're still in town? When I saw you the
other day at Sherry's I didn't have time to ask----" She broke off, and
added with a burst of frankness: "The truth is I was HORRID, Lily, and
I've wanted to tell you so ever since."

"Oh----" Miss Bart protested, drawing back from her penitent clasp; but
Mrs. Fisher went on with her usual directness: "Look here, Lily, don't
let's beat about the bush: half the trouble in life is caused by
pretending there isn't any. That's not my way, and I can only say I'm
thoroughly ashamed of myself for following the other women's lead. But
we'll talk of that by and bye--tell me now where you're staying and what
your plans are. I don't suppose you're keeping house in there with Grace
Stepney, eh?--and it struck me you might be rather at loose ends."

In Lily's present mood there was no resisting the honest friendliness of
this appeal, and she said with a smile: "I am at loose ends for the
moment, but Gerty Farish is still in town, and she's good enough to let
me be with her whenever she can spare the time."

Mrs. Fisher made a slight grimace. "H'm--that's a temperate joy.  Oh, I
know--Gerty's a trump, and worth all the rest of us put together; but A
LA LONGUE you're used to a little higher seasoning, aren't you, dear?
And besides, I suppose she'll be off herself before long--the first of
August, you say? Well, look here, you can't spend your summer in town;
we'll talk of that later too. But meanwhile, what do you say to putting a
few things in a trunk and coming down with me to the Sam Gormers'
tonight?"

And as Lily stared at the breathless suddenness of the suggestion, she
continued with her easy laugh: "You don't know them and they don't know
you; but that don't make a rap of difference. They've taken the Van
Alstyne place at Roslyn, and I've got CARTE BLANCHE to bring my friends
down there--the more the merrier. They do things awfully well, and
there's to be rather a jolly party there this week----" she broke off,
checked by an undefinable change in Miss Bart's expression. "Oh, I don't
mean YOUR particular set, you know: rather a different crowd, but very
good fun. The fact is, the Gormers have struck out on a line of their
own: what they want is to have a good time, and to have it in their own
way. They gave the other thing a few months' trial, under my
distinguished auspices, and they were really doing extremely
well--getting on a good deal faster than the Brys, just because they
didn't care as much--but suddenly they decided that the whole business
bored them, and that what they wanted was a crowd they could really feel
at home with. Rather original of them, don't you think so? Mattie Gormer
HAS got aspirations still; women always have; but she's awfully
easy-going, and Sam won't be bothered, and they both like to be the most
important people in sight, so they've started a sort of continuous
performance of their own, a kind of social Coney Island, where everybody
is welcome who can make noise enough and doesn't put on airs.  I think
it's awfully good fun myself--some of the artistic set, you know, any
pretty actress that's going, and so on. This week, for instance, they
have Audrey Anstell, who made such a hit last spring in 'The Winning of
Winny'; and Paul Morpeth--he's painting Mattie Gormer--and the Dick
Bellingers, and Kate Corby--well, every one you can think of who's jolly
and makes a row. Now don't stand there with your nose in the air, my
dear--it will be a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town, and
you'll find clever people as well as noisy ones--Morpeth, who admires
Mattie enormously, always brings one or two of his set."

Mrs. Fisher drew Lily toward the hansom with friendly authority.  "Jump
in now, there's a dear, and we'll drive round to your hotel and have your
things packed, and then we'll have tea, and the two maids can meet us at
the train."



It was a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town--of that no
doubt remained to Lily as, reclining in the shade of a leafy verandah,
she looked seaward across a stretch of greensward picturesquely dotted
with groups of ladies in lace raiment and men in tennis flannels. The
huge Van Alstyne house and its rambling dependencies were packed to their
fullest capacity with the Gormers' week-end guests, who now, in the
radiance of the Sunday forenoon, were dispersing themselves over the
grounds in quest of the various distractions the place afforded:
distractions ranging from tennis-courts to shooting-galleries, from
bridge and whiskey within doors to motors and steam-launches without.
Lily had the odd sense of having been caught up into the crowd as
carelessly as a passenger is gathered in by an express train. The blonde
and genial Mrs. Gormer might, indeed, have figured the conductor, calmly
assigning seats to the rush of travellers, while Carry Fisher represented
the porter pushing their bags into place, giving them their numbers for
the dining-car, and warning them when their station was at hand. The
train, meanwhile, had scarcely slackened speed--life whizzed on with a
deafening' rattle and roar, in which one traveller at least found a
welcome refuge from the sound of her own thoughts.  The Gormer MILIEU
represented a social out-skirt which Lily had always fastidiously
avoided; but it struck her, now that she was in it, as only a flamboyant
copy of her own world, a caricature approximating the real thing as the
"society play" approaches the manners of the drawing-room. The people
about her were doing the same things as the Trenors, the Van Osburghs and
the Dorsets: the difference lay in a hundred shades of aspect and manner,
from the pattern of the men's waistcoats to the inflexion of the women's
voices. Everything was pitched in a higher key, and there was more of
each thing: more noise, more colour, more champagne, more
familiarity--but also greater good-nature, less rivalry, and a fresher
capacity for enjoyment.

Miss Bart's arrival had been welcomed with an uncritical friendliness
that first irritated her pride and then brought her to a sharp sense of
her own situation--of the place in life which, for the moment, she must
accept and make the best of.  These people knew her story--of that her
first long talk with Carry Fisher had left no doubt: she was publicly
branded as the heroine of a "queer" episode--but instead of shrinking
from her as her own friends had done, they received her without question
into the easy promiscuity of their lives. They swallowed her past as
easily as they did Miss Anstell's, and with no apparent sense of any
difference in the size of the mouthful: all they asked was that she
should--in her own way, for they recognized a diversity of
gifts--contribute as much to the general amusement as that graceful
actress, whose talents, when off the stage, were of the most varied
order. Lily felt at once that any tendency to be "stuck-up," to mark a
sense of differences and distinctions, would be fatal to her continuance
in the Gormer set. To be taken in on such terms--and into such a
world!--was hard enough to the lingering pride in her; but she realized,
with a pang of self-contempt, that to be excluded from it would, after
all, be harder still. For, almost at once, she had felt the insidious
charm of slipping back into a life where every material difficulty was
smoothed away. The sudden escape from a stifling hotel in a dusty
deserted city to the space and luxury of a great country-house fanned by
sea breezes, had produced a state of moral lassitude agreeable enough
after the nervous tension and physical discomfort of the past weeks. For
the moment she must yield to the refreshment her senses craved--after
that she would reconsider her situation, and take counsel with her
dignity. Her enjoyment of her surroundings was, indeed, tinged by the
unpleasant consideration that she was accepting the hospitality and
courting the approval of people she had disdained under other conditions.
But she was growing less sensitive on such points: a hard glaze of
indifference was fast forming over her delicacies and susceptibilities,
and each concession to expediency hardened the surface a little more.

On the Monday, when the party disbanded with uproarious adieux, the
return to town threw into stronger relief the charms of the life she was
leaving. The other guests were dispersing to take up the same existence
in a different setting: some at Newport, some at Bar Harbour, some in the
elaborate rusticity of an Adirondack camp. Even Gerty Farish, who
welcomed Lily's return with tender solicitude, would soon be preparing to
join the aunt with whom she spent her summers on Lake George: only Lily
herself remained without plan or purpose, stranded in a backwater of the
great current of pleasure. But Carry Fisher, who had insisted on
transporting her to her own house, where she herself was to perch for a
day or two on the way to the Brys' camp, came to the rescue with a new
suggestion.

"Look here, Lily--I'll tell you what it is: I want you to take my place
with Mattie Gormer this summer. They're taking a party out to Alaska next
month in their private car, and Mattie, who is the laziest woman alive,
wants me to go with them, and relieve her of the bother of arranging
things; but the Brys want me too--oh, yes, we've made it up: didn't I
tell you?--and, to put it frankly, though I like the Gormers best,
there's more profit for me in the Brys. The fact is, they want to try
Newport this summer, and if I can make it a success for them they--well,
they'll make it a success for me." Mrs. Fisher clasped her hands
enthusiastically. "Do you know, Lily, the more I think of my idea the
better I like it--quite as much for you as for myself. The Gormers have
both taken a tremendous fancy to you, and the trip to Alaska
is--well--the very thing I should want for you just at present."

Miss Bart lifted her eyes with a keen glance. "To take me out of my
friends' way, you mean?" she said quietly; and Mrs. Fisher responded with
a deprecating kiss: "To keep you out of their sight till they realize how
much they miss you."



Miss Bart went with the Gormers to Alaska; and the expedition, if it did
not produce the effect anticipated by her friend, had at least the
negative advantage of removing her from the fiery centre of criticism and
discussion. Gerty Farish had opposed the plan with all the energy of her
somewhat inarticulate nature. She had even offered to give up her visit
to Lake George, and remain in town with Miss Bart, if the latter would
renounce her journey; but Lily could disguise her real distaste for this
plan under a sufficiently valid reason.

"You dear innocent, don't you see," she protested, "that Carry is quite
right, and that I must take up my usual life, and go about among people
as much as possible? If my old friends choose to believe lies about me I
shall have to make new ones, that's all; and you know beggars mustn't be
choosers. Not that I don't like Mattie Gormer--I DO like her: she's kind
and honest and unaffected; and don't you suppose I feel grateful to her
for making me welcome at a time when, as you've yourself seen, my own
family have unanimously washed their hands of me?"

Gerty shook her head, mutely unconvinced. She felt not only that Lily was
cheapening herself by making use of an intimacy she would never have
cultivated from choice, but that, in drifting back now to her former
manner of life, she was forfeiting her last chance of ever escaping from
it. Gerty had but an obscure conception of what Lily's actual experience
had been: but its consequences had established a lasting hold on her pity
since the memorable night when she had offered up her own secret hope to
her friend's extremity. To characters like Gerty's such a sacrifice
constitutes a moral claim on the part of the person in whose behalf it
has been made. Having once helped Lily, she must continue to help her;
and helping her, must believe in her, because faith is the main-spring of
such natures. But even if Miss Bart, after her renewed taste of the
amenities of life, could have returned to the barrenness of a New York
August, mitigated only by poor Gerty's presence, her worldly wisdom would
have counselled her against such an act of abnegation. She knew that
Carry Fisher was right: that an opportune absence might be the first step
toward rehabilitation, and that, at any rate, to linger on in town out of
season was a fatal admission of defeat.  From the Gormers' tumultuous
progress across their native continent, she returned with an altered view
of her situation.  The renewed habit of luxury--the daily waking to an
assured absence of care and presence of material ease--gradually blunted
her appreciation of these values, and left her more conscious of the void
they could not fill. Mattie Gormer's undiscriminating good-nature, and
the slap-dash sociability of her friends, who treated Lily precisely as
they treated each other--all these characteristic notes of difference
began to wear upon her endurance; and the more she saw to criticize in
her companions, the less justification she found for making use of them.
The longing to get back to her former surroundings hardened to a fixed
idea; but with the strengthening of her purpose came the inevitable
perception that, to attain it, she must exact fresh concessions from her
pride. These, for the moment, took the unpleasant form of continuing to
cling to her hosts after their return from Alaska. Little as she was in
the key of their MILIEU, her immense social facility, her long habit of
adapting herself to others without suffering her own outline to be
blurred, the skilled manipulation of all the polished implements of her
craft, had won for her an important place in the Gormer group. If their
resonant hilarity could never be hers, she contributed a note of easy
elegance more valuable to Mattie Gormer than the louder passages of the
band. Sam Gormer and his special cronies stood indeed a little in awe of
her; but Mattie's following, headed by Paul Morpeth, made her feel that
they prized her for the very qualities they most conspicuously lacked. If
Morpeth, whose social indolence was as great as his artistic activity,
had abandoned himself to the easy current of the Gormer existence, where
the minor exactions of politeness were unknown or ignored, and a man
could either break his engagements, or keep them in a painting-jacket and
slippers, he still preserved his sense of differences, and his
appreciation of graces he had no time to cultivate. During the
preparations for the Brys' TABLEAUX he had been immensely struck by
Lily's plastic possibilities--"not the face: too self-controlled for
expression; but the rest of her--gad, what a model she'd make!"--and
though his abhorrence of the world in which he had seen her was too great
for him to think of seeking her there, he was fully alive to the
privilege of having her to look at and listen to while he lounged in
Mattie Gormer's dishevelled drawing-room.

Lily had thus formed, in the tumult of her surroundings, a little nucleus
of friendly relations which mitigated the crudeness of her course in
lingering with the Gormers after their return. Nor was she without pale
glimpses of her own world, especially since the breaking-up of the
Newport season had set the social current once more toward Long Island.
Kate Corby, whose tastes made her as promiscuous as Carry Fisher was
rendered by her necessities, occasionally descended on the Gormers,
where, after a first stare of surprise, she took Lily's presence almost
too much as a matter of course. Mrs. Fisher, too, appearing frequently in
the neighbourhood, drove over to impart her experiences and give Lily
what she called the latest report from the weather-bureau; and the
latter, who had never directly invited her confidence, could yet talk
with her more freely than with Gerty Farish, in whose presence it was
impossible even to admit the existence of much that Mrs. Fisher
conveniently took for granted.

Mrs. Fisher, moreover, had no embarrassing curiosity. She did not wish to
probe the inwardness of Lily's situation, but simply to view it from the
outside, and draw her conclusions accordingly; and these conclusions, at
the end of a confidential talk, she summed up to her friend in the
succinct remark: "You must marry as soon as you can."

Lily uttered a faint laugh--for once Mrs. Fisher lacked originality.  "Do
you mean, like Gerty Farish, to recommend the unfailing panacea of 'a
good man's love'?"

"No--I don't think either of my candidates would answer to that
description," said Mrs. Fisher after a pause of reflection.

"Either? Are there actually two?"

"Well, perhaps I ought to say one and a half--for the moment."

Miss Bart received this with increasing amusement. "Other things being
equal, I think I should prefer a half-husband: who is he?"

"Don't fly out at me till you hear my reasons--George Dorset."

"Oh----" Lily murmured reproachfully; but Mrs. Fisher pressed on
unrebuffed. "Well, why not? They had a few weeks' honeymoon when they
first got back from Europe, but now things are going badly with them
again. Bertha has been behaving more than ever like a madwoman, and
George's powers of credulity are very nearly exhausted. They're at their
place here, you know, and I spent last Sunday with them. It was a ghastly
party--no one else but poor Neddy Silverton, who looks like a
galley-slave (they used to talk of my making that poor boy unhappy!)--and
after luncheon George carried me off on a long walk, and told me the end
would have to come soon."

Miss Bart made an incredulous gesture. "As far as that goes, the end will
never come--Bertha will always know how to get him back when she wants
him."

Mrs. Fisher continued to observe her tentatively. "Not if he has any one
else to turn to! Yes--that's just what it comes to: the poor creature
can't stand alone. And I remember him such a good fellow, full of life
and enthusiasm." She paused, and went on, dropping her glance from
Lily's: "He wouldn't stay with her ten minutes if he KNEW----"

"Knew----?" Miss Bart repeated.

"What YOU must, for instance--with the opportunities you've had!  If he
had positive proof, I mean----"

Lily interrupted her with a deep blush of displeasure. "Please let us
drop the subject, Carry: it's too odious to me." And to divert her
companion's attention she added, with an attempt at lightness: "And your
second candidate? We must not forget him."

Mrs. Fisher echoed her laugh. "I wonder if you'll cry out just as loud if
I say--Sim Rosedale?"

Miss Bart did not cry out: she sat silent, gazing thoughtfully at her
friend. The suggestion, in truth, gave expression to a possibility which,
in the last weeks, had more than once recurred to her; but after a moment
she said carelessly: "Mr. Rosedale wants a wife who can establish him in
the bosom of the Van Osburghs and Trenors."

Mrs. Fisher caught her up eagerly. "And so YOU could--with his money!
Don't you see how beautifully it would work out for you both?"

"I don't see any way of making him see it," Lily returned, with a laugh
intended to dismiss the subject.

But in reality it lingered with her long after Mrs. Fisher had taken
leave. She had seen very little of Rosedale since her annexation by the
Gormers, for he was still steadily bent on penetrating to the inner
Paradise from which she was now excluded; but once or twice, when nothing
better offered, he had turned up for a Sunday, and on these occasions he
had left her in no doubt as to his view of her situation.  That he still
admired her was, more than ever, offensively evident; for in the Gormer
circle, where he expanded as in his native element, there were no
puzzling conventions to check the full expression of his approval. But it
was in the quality of his admiration that she read his shrewd estimate of
her case. He enjoyed letting the Gormers see that he had known "Miss
Lily"--she was "Miss Lily" to him now--before they had had the faintest
social existence: enjoyed more especially impressing Paul Morpeth with
the distance to which their intimacy dated back. But he let it be felt
that that intimacy was a mere ripple on the surface of a rushing social
current, the kind of relaxation which a man of large interests and
manifold preoccupations permits himself in his hours of ease.

The necessity of accepting this view of their past relation, and of
meeting it in the key of pleasantry prevalent among her new friends, was
deeply humiliating to Lily. But she dared less than ever to quarrel with
Rosedale. She suspected that her rejection rankled among the most
unforgettable of his rebuffs, and the fact that he knew something of her
wretched transaction with Trenor, and was sure to put the basest
construction on it, seemed to place her hopelessly in his power. Yet at
Carry Fisher's suggestion a new hope had stirred in her. Much as she
disliked Rosedale, she no longer absolutely despised him. For he was
gradually attaining his object in life, and that, to Lily, was always
less despicable than to miss it. With the slow unalterable persistency
which she had always felt in him, he was making his way through the dense
mass of social antagonisms. Already his wealth, and the masterly use he
had made of it, were giving him an enviable prominence in the world of
affairs, and placing Wall Street under obligations which only Fifth
Avenue could repay. In response to these claims, his name began to figure
on municipal committees and charitable boards; he appeared at banquets to
distinguished strangers, and his candidacy at one of the fashionable
clubs was discussed with diminishing opposition. He had figured once or
twice at the Trenor dinners, and had learned to speak with just the right
note of disdain of the big Van Osburgh crushes; and all he now needed was
a wife whose affiliations would shorten the last tedious steps of his
ascent.  It was with that object that, a year earlier, he had fixed his
affections on Miss Bart; but in the interval he had mounted nearer to the
goal, while she had lost the power to abbreviate the remaining steps of
the way. All this she saw with the clearness of vision that came to her
in moments of despondency. It was success that dazzled her--she could
distinguish facts plainly enough in the twilight of failure. And the
twilight, as she now sought to pierce it, was gradually lighted by a
faint spark of reassurance. Under the utilitarian motive of Rosedale's
wooing she had felt, clearly enough, the heat of personal inclination.
She would not have detested him so heartily had she not known that he
dared to admire her. What, then, if the passion persisted, though the
other motive had ceased to sustain it? She had never even tried to please
him--he had been drawn to her in spite of her manifest disdain. What if
she now chose to exert the power which, even in its passive state, he had
felt so strongly? What if she made him marry her for love, now that he
had no other reason for marrying her?



As became persons of their rising consequence, the Gormers were engaged
in building a country-house on Long Island; and it was a part of Miss
Bart's duty to attend her hostess on frequent visits of inspection to the
new estate. There, while Mrs. Gormer plunged into problems of lighting
and sanitation, Lily had leisure to wander, in the bright autumn air,
along the tree-fringed bay to which the land declined.  Little as she was
addicted to solitude, there had come to be moments when it seemed a
welcome escape from the empty noises of her life. She was weary of being
swept passively along a current of pleasure and business in which she had
no share; weary of seeing other people pursue amusement and squander
money, while she felt herself of no more account among them than an
expensive toy in the hands of a spoiled child.

It was in this frame of mind that, striking back from the shore one
morning into the windings of an unfamiliar lane, she came suddenly upon
the figure of George Dorset. The Dorset place was in the immediate
neighbourhood of the Gormers' newly-acquired estate, and in her
motor-flights thither with Mrs. Gormer, Lily had caught one or two
passing glimpses of the couple; but they moved in so different an orbit
that she had not considered the possibility of a direct encounter.

Dorset, swinging along with bent head, in moody abstraction, did not see
Miss Bart till he was close upon her; but the sight, instead of bringing
him to a halt, as she had half-expected, sent him toward her with an
eagerness which found expression in his opening words.

"Miss Bart!--You'll shake hands, won't you? I've been hoping to meet
you--I should have written to you if I'd dared." His face, with its
tossed red hair and straggling moustache, had a driven uneasy look, as
though life had become an unceasing race between himself and the thoughts
at his heels.

The look drew a word of compassionate greeting from Lily, and he pressed
on, as if encouraged by her tone: "I wanted to apologize--to ask you to
forgive me for the miserable part I played----"

She checked him with a quick gesture. "Don't let us speak of it: I was
very sorry for you," she said, with a tinge of disdain which, as she
instantly perceived, was not lost on him.

He flushed to his haggard eyes, flushed so cruelly that she repented the
thrust. "You might well be; you don't know--you must let me explain. I
was deceived: abominably deceived----"

"I am still more sorry for you, then," she interposed, without irony;
"but you must see that I am not exactly the person with whom the subject
can be discussed."

He met this with a look of genuine wonder. "Why not? Isn't it to you, of
all people, that I owe an explanation----"

"No explanation is necessary: the situation was perfectly clear to me."

"Ah----" he murmured, his head drooping again, and his irresolute hand
switching at the underbrush along the lane. But as Lily made a movement
to pass on, he broke out with fresh vehemence: "Miss Bart, for God's sake
don't turn from me! We used to be good friends--you were always kind to
me--and you don't know how I need a friend now."

The lamentable weakness of the words roused a motion of pity in Lily's
breast. She too needed friends--she had tasted the pang of loneliness;
and her resentment of Bertha Dorset's cruelty softened her heart to the
poor wretch who was after all the chief of Bertha's victims.

"I still wish to be kind; I feel no ill-will toward you," she said.  "But
you must understand that after what has happened we can't be friends
again--we can't see each other."

"Ah, you ARE kind--you're merciful--you always were!" He fixed his
miserable gaze on her. "But why can't we be friends--why not, when I've
repented in dust and ashes? Isn't it hard that you should condemn me to
suffer for the falseness, the treachery of others? I was punished enough
at the time--is there to be no respite for me?"

"I should have thought you had found complete respite in the
reconciliation which was effected at my expense," Lily began, with
renewed impatience; but he broke in imploringly: "Don't put it in that
way--when that's been the worst of my punishment. My God! what could I
do--wasn't I powerless? You were singled out as a sacrifice: any word I
might have said would have been turned against you----"

"I have told you I don't blame you; all I ask you to understand is that,
after the use Bertha chose to make of me--after all that her behaviour
has since implied--it's impossible that you and I should meet."

He continued to stand before her, in his dogged weakness. "Is it--need it
be? Mightn't there be circumstances----?" he checked himself, slashing at
the wayside weeds in a wider radius. Then he began again: "Miss Bart,
listen--give me a minute. If we're not to meet again, at least let me
have a hearing now. You say we can't be friends after--after what has
happened. But can't I at least appeal to your pity? Can't I move you if I
ask you to think of me as a prisoner--a prisoner you alone can set free?"

Lily's inward start betrayed itself in a quick blush: was it possible
that this was really the sense of Carry Fisher's adumbrations?

"I can't see how I can possibly be of any help to you," she murmured,
drawing back a little from the mounting excitement of his look.

Her tone seemed to sober him, as it had so often done in his stormiest
moments. The stubborn lines of his face relaxed, and he said, with an
abrupt drop to docility: "You WOULD see, if you'd be as merciful as you
used to be: and heaven knows I've never needed it more!"

She paused a moment, moved in spite of herself by this reminder of her
influence over him. Her fibres had been softened by suffering, and the
sudden glimpse into his mocked and broken life disarmed her contempt for
his weakness.

"I am very sorry for you--I would help you willingly; but you must have
other friends, other advisers."

"I never had a friend like you," he answered simply. "And besides--can't
you see?--you're the only person"--his voice dropped to a whisper--"the
only person who knows."

Again she felt her colour change; again her heart rose in precipitate
throbs to meet what she felt was coming. He lifted his eyes to her
entreatingly. "You do see, don't you? You understand? I'm desperate--I'm
at the end of my tether. I want to be free, and you can free me. I know
you can. You don't want to keep me bound fast in hell, do you? You can't
want to take such a vengeance as that. You were always kind--your eyes
are kind now. You say you're sorry for me. Well, it rests with you to
show it; and heaven knows there's nothing to keep you back. You
understand, of course--there wouldn't be a hint of publicity--not a sound
or a syllable to connect you with the thing. It would never come to that,
you know: all I need is to be able to say definitely: 'I know this--and
this--and this'--and the fight would drop, and the way be cleared, and
the whole abominable business swept out of sight in a second."

He spoke pantingly, like a tired runner, with breaks of exhaustion
between his words; and through the breaks she caught, as through the
shifting rents of a fog, great golden vistas of peace and safety. For
there was no mistaking the definite intention behind his vague appeal;
she could have filled up the blanks without the help of Mrs. Fisher's
insinuations. Here was a man who turned to her in the extremity of his
loneliness and his humiliation: if she came to him at such a moment he
would be hers with all the force of his deluded faith. And the power to
make him so lay in her hand--lay there in a completeness he could not
even remotely conjecture. Revenge and rehabilitation might be hers at a
stroke--there was something dazzling in the completeness of the
opportunity.

She stood silent, gazing away from him down the autumnal stretch of the
deserted lane. And suddenly fear possessed her--fear of herself, and of
the terrible force of the temptation. All her past weaknesses were like
so many eager accomplices drawing her toward the path their feet had
already smoothed. She turned quickly, and held out her hand to Dorset.

"Goodbye--I'm sorry; there's nothing in the world that I can do."

"Nothing? Ah, don't say that," he cried; "say what's true: that you
abandon me like the others. You, the only creature who could have saved
me!"

"Goodbye--goodbye," she repeated hurriedly; and as she moved away she
heard him cry out on a last note of entreaty: "At least you'll let me see
you once more?"



Lily, on regaining the Gormer grounds, struck rapidly across the lawn
toward the unfinished house, where she fancied that her hostess might be
speculating, not too resignedly, on the cause of her delay; for, like
many unpunctual persons, Mrs. Gormer disliked to be kept waiting.

As Miss Bart reached the avenue, however, she saw a smart phaeton with a
high-stepping pair disappear behind the shrubbery in the direction of the
gate; and on the doorstep stood Mrs. Gormer, with a glow of retrospective
pleasure on her open countenance. At sight of Lily the glow deepened to
an embarrassed red, and she said with a slight laugh: "Did you see my
visitor? Oh, I thought you came back by the avenue. It was Mrs. George
Dorset--she said she'd dropped in to make a neighbourly call."

Lily met the announcement with her usual composure, though her experience
of Bertha's idiosyncrasies would not have led her to include the
neighbourly instinct among them; and Mrs. Gormer, relieved to see that
she gave no sign of surprise, went on with a deprecating laugh: "Of
course what really brought her was curiosity--she made me take her all
over the house. But no one could have been nicer--no airs, you know, and
so good-natured: I can quite see why people think her so fascinating."

This surprising event, coinciding too completely with her meeting with
Dorset to be regarded as contingent upon it, had yet immediately struck
Lily with a vague sense of foreboding. It was not in Bertha's habits to
be neighbourly, much less to make advances to any one outside the
immediate circle of her affinities. She had always consistently ignored
the world of outer aspirants, or had recognized its individual members
only when prompted by motives of self-interest; and the very
capriciousness of her condescensions had, as Lily was aware, given them
special value in the eyes of the persons she distinguished. Lily saw this
now in Mrs. Gormer's unconcealable complacency, and in the happy
irrelevance with which, for the next day or two, she quoted Bertha's
opinions and speculated on the origin of her gown. All the secret
ambitions which Mrs. Gormer's native indolence, and the attitude of her
companions, kept in habitual abeyance, were now germinating afresh in the
glow of Bertha's advances; and whatever the cause of the latter, Lily saw
that, if they were followed up, they were likely to have a disturbing
effect upon her own future.

She had arranged to break the length of her stay with her new friends by
one or two visits to other acquaintances as recent; and on her return
from this somewhat depressing excursion she was immediately conscious
that Mrs. Dorset's influence was still in the air. There had been another
exchange of visits, a tea at a country-club, an encounter at a hunt ball;
there was even a rumour of an approaching dinner, which Mattie Gormer,
with an unnatural effort at discretion, tried to smuggle out of the
conversation whenever Miss Bart took part in it.

The latter had already planned to return to town after a farewell Sunday
with her friends; and, with Gerty Farish's aid, had discovered a small
private hotel where she might establish herself for the winter.  The
hotel being on the edge of a fashionable neighbourhood, the price of the
few square feet she was to occupy was considerably in excess of her
means; but she found a justification for her dislike of poorer quarters
in the argument that, at this particular juncture, it was of the utmost
importance to keep up a show of prosperity. In reality, it was impossible
for her, while she had the means to pay her way for a week ahead, to
lapse into a form of existence like Gerty Farish's. She had never been so
near the brink of insolvency; but she could at least manage to meet her
weekly hotel bill, and having settled the heaviest of her previous debts
out of the money she had received from Trenor, she had a still fair
margin of credit to go upon. The situation, however, was not agreeable
enough to lull her to complete unconsciousness of its insecurity.  Her
rooms, with their cramped outlook down a sallow vista of brick walls and
fire-escapes, her lonely meals in the dark restaurant with its surcharged
ceiling and haunting smell of coffee--all these material discomforts,
which were yet to be accounted as so many privileges soon to be
withdrawn, kept constantly before her the disadvantages of her state; and
her mind reverted the more insistently to Mrs. Fisher's counsels.  Beat
about the question as she would, she knew the outcome of it was that she
must try to marry Rosedale; and in this conviction she was fortified by
an unexpected visit from George Dorset.

She found him, on the first Sunday after her return to town, pacing her
narrow sitting-room to the imminent peril of the few knick-knacks with
which she had tried to disguise its plush exuberances; but the sight of
her seemed to quiet him, and he said meekly that he hadn't come to bother
her--that he asked only to be allowed to sit for half an hour and talk of
anything she liked. In reality, as she knew, he had but one subject:
himself and his wretchedness; and it was the need of her sympathy that
had drawn him back. But he began with a pretence of questioning her about
herself, and as she replied, she saw that, for the first time, a faint
realization of her plight penetrated the dense surface of his
self-absorption. Was it possible that her old beast of an aunt had
actually cut her off? That she was living alone like this because there
was no one else for her to go to, and that she really hadn't more than
enough to keep alive on till the wretched little legacy was paid? The
fibres of sympathy were nearly atrophied in him, but he was suffering so
intensely that he had a faint glimpse of what other sufferings might
mean--and, as she perceived, an almost simultaneous perception of the way
in which her particular misfortunes might serve him.

When at length she dismissed him, on the pretext that she must dress for
dinner, he lingered entreatingly on the threshold to blurt out: "It's
been such a comfort--do say you'll let me see you again--" But to this
direct appeal it was impossible to give an assent; and she said with
friendly decisiveness: "I'm sorry--but you know why I can't."

He coloured to the eyes, pushed the door shut, and stood before her
embarrassed but insistent. "I know how you might, if you would--if things
were different--and it lies with you to make them so. It's just a word to
say, and you put me out of my misery!"

Their eyes met, and for a second she trembled again with the nearness of
the temptation. "You're mistaken; I know nothing; I saw nothing," she
exclaimed, striving, by sheer force of reiteration, to build a barrier
between herself and her peril; and as he turned away, groaning out "You
sacrifice us both," she continued to repeat, as if it were a charm: "I
know nothing--absolutely nothing."



Lily had seen little of Rosedale since her illuminating talk with Mrs.
Fisher, but on the two or three occasions when they had met she was
conscious of having distinctly advanced in his favour.  There could be no
doubt that he admired her as much as ever, and she believed it rested
with herself to raise his admiration to the point where it should bear
down the lingering counsels of expediency. The task was not an easy one;
but neither was it easy, in her long sleepless nights, to face the
thought of what George Dorset was so clearly ready to offer.  Baseness
for baseness, she hated the other least: there were even moments when a
marriage with Rosedale seemed the only honourable solution of her
difficulties. She did not indeed let her imagination range beyond the day
of plighting: after that everything faded into a haze of material
well-being, in which the personality of her benefactor remained
mercifully vague. She had learned, in her long vigils, that there were
certain things not good to think of, certain midnight images that must at
any cost be exorcised--and one of these was the image of herself as
Rosedale's wife.

Carry Fisher, on the strength, as she frankly owned, of the Brys' Newport
success, had taken for the autumn months a small house at Tuxedo; and
thither Lily was bound on the Sunday after Dorset's visit.  Though it was
nearly dinner-time when she arrived, her hostess was still out, and the
firelit quiet of the small silent house descended on her spirit with a
sense of peace and familiarity. It may be doubted if such an emotion had
ever before been evoked by Carry Fisher's surroundings; but, contrasted
to the world in which Lily had lately lived, there was an air of repose
and stability in the very placing of the furniture, and in the quiet
competence of the parlour-maid who led her up to her room. Mrs. Fisher's
unconventionality was, after all, a merely superficial divergence from an
inherited social creed, while the manners of the Gormer circle
represented their first attempt to formulate such a creed for themselves.

It was the first time since her return from Europe that Lily had found
herself in a congenial atmosphere, and the stirring of familiar
associations had almost prepared her, as she descended the stairs before
dinner, to enter upon a group of her old acquaintances. But this
expectation was instantly checked by the reflection that the friends who
remained loyal were precisely those who would be least willing to expose
her to such encounters; and it was hardly with surprise that she found,
instead, Mr. Rosedale kneeling domestically on the drawing-room hearth
before his hostess's little girl.

Rosedale in the paternal role was hardly a figure to soften Lily; yet she
could not but notice a quality of homely goodness in his advances to the
child. They were not, at any rate, the premeditated and perfunctory
endearments of the guest under his hostess's eye, for he and the little
girl had the room to themselves; and something in his attitude made him
seem a simple and kindly being compared to the small critical creature
who endured his homage. Yes, he would be kind--Lily, from the threshold,
had time to feel--kind in his gross, unscrupulous, rapacious way, the way
of the predatory creature with his mate.  She had but a moment in which
to consider whether this glimpse of the fireside man mitigated her
repugnance, or gave it, rather, a more concrete and intimate form; for at
sight of her he was immediately on his feet again, the florid and
dominant Rosedale of Mattie Gormer's drawing-room.

It was no surprise to Lily to find that he had been selected as her only
fellow-guest. Though she and her hostess had not met since the latter's
tentative discussion of her future, Lily knew that the acuteness which
enabled Mrs. Fisher to lay a safe and pleasant course through a world of
antagonistic forces was not infrequently exercised for the benefit of her
friends. It was, in fact, characteristic of Carry that, while she
actively gleaned her own stores from the fields of affluence, her real
sympathies were on the other side--with the unlucky, the unpopular, the
unsuccessful, with all her hungry fellow-toilers in the shorn stubble of
success.

Mrs. Fisher's experience guarded her against the mistake of exposing
Lily, for the first evening, to the unmitigated impression of Rosedale's
personality. Kate Corby and two or three men dropped in to dinner, and
Lily, alive to every detail of her friend's method, saw that such
opportunities as had been contrived for her were to be deferred till she
had, as it were, gained courage to make effectual use of them. She had a
sense of acquiescing in this plan with the passiveness of a sufferer
resigned to the surgeon's touch; and this feeling of almost lethargic
helplessness continued when, after the departure of the guests, Mrs.
Fisher followed her upstairs.

"May I come in and smoke a cigarette over your fire? If we talk in my
room we shall disturb the child." Mrs. Fisher looked about her with the
eye of the solicitous hostess. "I hope you've managed to make yourself
comfortable, dear? Isn't it a jolly little house? It's such a blessing to
have a few quiet weeks with the baby."

Carry, in her rare moments of prosperity, became so expansively maternal
that Miss Bart sometimes wondered whether, if she could ever get time and
money enough, she would not end by devoting them both to her daughter.

"It's a well-earned rest: I'll say that for myself," she continued,
sinking down with a sigh of content on the pillowed lounge near the fire.
"Louisa Bry is a stern task-master: I often used to wish myself back with
the Gormers. Talk of love making people jealous and suspicious--it's
nothing to social ambition!  Louisa used to lie awake at night wondering
whether the women who called on us called on ME because I was with her,
or on HER because she was with me; and she was always laying traps to
find out what I thought. Of course I had to disown my oldest friends,
rather than let her suspect she owed me the chance of making a single
acquaintance--when, all the while, that was what she had me there for,
and what she wrote me a handsome cheque for when the season was over!"

Mrs. Fisher was not a woman who talked of herself without cause, and the
practice of direct speech, far from precluding in her an occasional
resort to circuitous methods, served rather, at crucial moments, the
purpose of the juggler's chatter while he shifts the contents of his
sleeves. Through the haze of her cigarette smoke she continued to gaze
meditatively at Miss Bart, who, having dismissed her maid, sat before the
toilet-table shaking out over her shoulders the loosened undulations of
her hair.

"Your hair's wonderful, Lily. Thinner--? What does that matter, when it's
so light and alive? So many women's worries seem to go straight to their
hair--but yours looks as if there had never been an anxious thought under
it. I never saw you look better than you did this evening. Mattie Gormer
told me that Morpeth wanted to paint you--why don't you let him?"

Miss Bart's immediate answer was to address a critical glance to the
reflection of the countenance under discussion. Then she said, with a
slight touch of irritation: "I don't care to accept a portrait from Paul
Morpeth."

Mrs. Fisher mused. "N--no. And just now, especially--well, he can do you
after you're married." She waited a moment, and then went on: "By the
way, I had a visit from Mattie the other day.  She turned up here last
Sunday--and with Bertha Dorset, of all people in the world!"

She paused again to measure the effect of this announcement on her
hearer, but the brush in Miss Bart's lifted hand maintained its
unwavering stroke from brow to nape.

"I never was more astonished," Mrs. Fisher pursued. "I don't know two
women less predestined to intimacy--from Bertha's standpoint, that is;
for of course poor Mattie thinks it natural enough that she should be
singled out--I've no doubt the rabbit always thinks it is fascinating the
anaconda. Well, you know I've always told you that Mattie secretly longed
to bore herself with the really fashionable; and now that the chance has
come, I see that she's capable of sacrificing all her old friends to it."

Lily laid aside her brush and turned a penetrating glance upon her
friend. "Including ME?" she suggested.

"Ah, my dear," murmured Mrs. Fisher, rising to push back a log from the
hearth.

"That's what Bertha means, isn't it?" Miss Bart went on steadily.  "For
of course she always means something; and before I left Long Island I saw
that she was beginning to lay her toils for Mattie."

Mrs. Fisher sighed evasively. "She has her fast now, at any rate.  To
think of that loud independence of Mattie's being only a subtler form of
snobbishness! Bertha can already make her believe anything she
pleases--and I'm afraid she's begun, my poor child, by insinuating
horrors about you."

Lily flushed under the shadow of her drooping hair. "The world is too
vile," she murmured, averting herself from Mrs. Fisher's anxious scrutiny.

"It's not a pretty place; and the only way to keep a footing in it is to
fight it on its own terms--and above all, my dear, not alone!" Mrs.
Fisher gathered up her floating implications in a resolute grasp.
"You've told me so little that I can only guess what has been happening;
but in the rush we all live in there's no time to keep on hating any one
without a cause, and if Bertha is still nasty enough to want to injure
you with other people it must be because she's still afraid of you. From
her standpoint there's only one reason for being afraid of you; and my
own idea is that, if you want to punish her, you hold the means in your
hand. I believe you can marry George Dorset tomorrow; but if you don't
care for that particular form of retaliation, the only thing to save you
from Bertha is to marry somebody else."

 Six weeks later, back in New York, the social circle attends the funeral of Mrs. Peniston, who died suddenly. Her will declares that most of her estate be left to Jack Stepney, her already-wealthy nephew. Lily is snubbed, receiving only $10,000, while the remainder of the estate is left to Grace Stepney. Lily, despite feeling cheated, is happy overall because the money will pay off virtually all her debt to Gus Trenor. She learns, however, that she will not be able to receive the money for a whole year, meaning that she will remain destitute for quite some time. Meanwhile, other people in the community gossip that Lily was likely snubbed when Mrs. Peniston heard that she seduced George Dorset. Lily begins to fear that she will be rejected from all of society, a fear confirmed by Gerty Farish's assertion that Bertha Dorset, as a high-ranking member of society, will be held a more credible source of information than Lily. To her dismay, Lily realizes that Gerty is her only remaining friend. We learn that after she was kicked off the yacht, Lily went to England for a short stay, but Selden convinced her to return to America. She came home to find that her reputation had been totally destroyed. It is clear that Bertha used Lily to keep George distracted, then framed Lily to get rid of her. Lily now makes it her goal to regain her social standing, although this will not be easy. One night, when she goes out to dinner with Gerty, they meet the Trenors, Carry Fisher and Simon Rosedale. They speak briefly and awkwardly, which indicates that Lily is now generally disliked after being discredited. Meanwhile, Lily is still plagued by her financial troubles. She feels it morally necessary to repay Trenor, although she cannot do so for another year. She asks Grace to loan her money, but Grace flatly refuses, telling Lily she ought to be ashamed of herself for disgracing herself and, indirectly, Mrs. Peniston. Even Lily's own family has deserted her. As she leaves her interview with Grace, Lily bumps into Carry Fisher, who tries to make amends with her. Carry convinces Lily to go to the Gormers' party that night, a move that proves successful because soon afterwards the Gormers invite Lily to go on vacation with them to Alaska, an invitation which Lily accepts. Her hope is to stay in Alaska until the New York socialites forgive her and miss her, a plan which partially works. Lily wins herself a place in the rising Gormer social circle, which contains some people who are also in the Dorset/Trenor social circle. Carry also encourages Lily to marry as soon as possible in order to cement her social comeback. Carry suggests George, who may get divorced from Bertha at any time, and also mentions Simon Rosedale. The latter no longer seems like a bad alternative to Lily, who is becoming desperate for security in her friends and finances. Later on, walking around town, Lily meets George, who apologizes to her for all that has happened. He admits that he has also been outcast by society, and he needs a friend. Lily tells him that after the scandal, she can no longer be friends with him at all. George begs her to help him, saying that only she knows about the affair between Bertha and Ned Silverton, and so she can help release him from his failed marriage. However, Lily offers no help and says she can never see George again. She returns to the Gormer house and learns that Bertha stopped by to see her in her absence. Lily suspects that Bertha is trying to spy with the intent of harming her. She resolves to spend the winter in a hotel, where she can recoup her finances and relax for a while. George comes by for a visit to plead his case once more, but again Lily refuses him. She lies, telling him that she knows nothing of Bertha and her extramarital affairs, although we know that she has Bertha's love letters to Selden. Lily asks George to never return. Lily resolves to marry Rosedale. Carry, who has had enormous success bringing the Brys into her social world, assists by inviting both Lily and Rosedale to a party. When Lily sees Rosedale again, something about him leaves her with mixed feelings about the possibility of marriage.

