Chapter: The first thousand dollar cheque which Lily received with a blotted
scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence in the exact
degree to which it effaced her debts.

The transaction had justified itself by its results: she saw now how
absurd it would have been to let any primitive scruple deprive her of
this easy means of appeasing her creditors. Lily felt really virtuous as
she dispensed the sum in sops to her tradesmen, and the fact that a fresh
order accompanied each payment did not lessen her sense of
disinterestedness. How many women, in her place, would have given the
orders without making the payment!

She had found it reassuringly easy to keep Trenor in a good humour. To
listen to his stories, to receive his confidences and laugh at his jokes,
seemed for the moment all that was required of her, and the complacency
with which her hostess regarded these attentions freed them of the least
hint of ambiguity. Mrs. Trenor evidently assumed that Lily's growing
intimacy with her husband was simply an indirect way of returning her own
kindness.

"I'm so glad you and Gus have become such good friends," she said
approvingly. "It's too delightful of you to be so nice to him, and put up
with all his tiresome stories. I know what they are, because I had to
listen to them when we were engaged--I'm sure he is telling the same ones
still. And now I shan't always have to be asking Carry Fisher here to
keep him in a good-humour. She's a perfect vulture, you know; and she
hasn't the least moral sense.  She is always getting Gus to speculate for
her, and I'm sure she never pays when she loses."

Miss Bart could shudder at this state of things without the embarrassment
of a personal application. Her own position was surely quite different.
There could be no question of her not paying when she lost, since Trenor
had assured her that she was certain not to lose. In sending her the
cheque he had explained that he had made five thousand for her out of
Rosedale's "tip," and had put four thousand back in the same venture, as
there was the promise of another "big rise"; she understood therefore
that he was now speculating with her own money, and that she consequently
owed him no more than the gratitude which such a trifling service
demanded. She vaguely supposed that, to raise the first sum, he had
borrowed on her securities; but this was a point over which her curiosity
did not linger. It was concentrated, for the moment, on the probable date
of the next "big rise."

The news of this event was received by her some weeks later, on the
occasion of Jack Stepney's marriage to Miss Van Osburgh. As a cousin of
the bridegroom, Miss Bart had been asked to act as bridesmaid; but she
had declined on the plea that, since she was much taller than the other
attendant virgins, her presence might mar the symmetry of the group.  The
truth was, she had attended too many brides to the altar: when next seen
there she meant to be the chief figure in the ceremony. She knew the
pleasantries made at the expense of young girls who have been too long
before the public, and she was resolved to avoid such assumptions of
youthfulness as might lead people to think her older than she really was.

The Van Osburgh marriage was celebrated in the village church near the
paternal estate on the Hudson. It was the "simple country wedding" to
which guests are convoyed in special trains, and from which the hordes of
the uninvited have to be fended off by the intervention of the police.
While these sylvan rites were taking place, in a church packed with
fashion and festooned with orchids, the representatives of the press were
threading their way, note-book in hand, through the labyrinth of wedding
presents, and the agent of a cinematograph syndicate was setting up his
apparatus at the church door. It was the kind of scene in which Lily had
often pictured herself as taking the principal part, and on this occasion
the fact that she was once more merely a casual spectator, instead of the
mystically veiled figure occupying the centre of attention, strengthened
her resolve to assume the latter part before the year was over. The fact
that her immediate anxieties were relieved did not blind her to a
possibility of their recurrence; it merely gave her enough buoyancy to
rise once more above her doubts and feel a renewed faith in her beauty,
her power, and her general fitness to attract a brilliant destiny. It
could not be that one conscious of such aptitudes for mastery and
enjoyment was doomed to a perpetuity of failure; and her mistakes looked
easily reparable in the light of her restored self-confidence.

A special appositeness was given to these reflections by the discovery,
in a neighbouring pew, of the serious profile and neatly-trimmed beard of
Mr. Percy Gryce. There was something almost bridal in his own aspect: his
large white gardenia had a symbolic air that struck Lily as a good omen.
After all, seen in an assemblage of his kind he was not
ridiculous-looking: a friendly critic might have called his heaviness
weighty, and he was at his best in the attitude of vacant passivity which
brings out the oddities of the restless. She fancied he was the kind of
man whose sentimental associations would be stirred by the conventional
imagery of a wedding, and she pictured herself, in the seclusion of the
Van Osburgh conservatories, playing skillfully upon sensibilities thus
prepared for her touch. In fact, when she looked at the other women about
her, and recalled the image she had brought away from her own glass, it
did not seem as though any special skill would be needed to repair her
blunder and bring him once more to her feet.

The sight of Selden's dark head, in a pew almost facing her, disturbed
for a moment the balance of her complacency. The rise of her blood as
their eyes met was succeeded by a contrary motion, a wave of resistance
and withdrawal. She did not wish to see him again, not because she feared
his influence, but because his presence always had the effect of
cheapening her aspirations, of throwing her whole world out of focus.
Besides, he was a living reminder of the worst mistake in her career, and
the fact that he had been its cause did not soften her feelings toward
him. She could still imagine an ideal state of existence in which, all
else being superadded, intercourse with Selden might be the last touch of
luxury; but in the world as it was, such a privilege was likely to cost
more than it was worth.

"Lily, dear, I never saw you look so lovely! You look as if something
delightful had just happened to you!"

The young lady who thus formulated her admiration of her brilliant friend
did not, in her own person, suggest such happy possibilities.  Miss
Gertrude Farish, in fact, typified the mediocre and the ineffectual. If
there were compensating qualities in her wide frank glance and the
freshness of her smile, these were qualities which only the sympathetic
observer would perceive before noticing that her eyes were of a workaday
grey and her lips without haunting curves. Lily's own view of her wavered
between pity for her limitations and impatience at her cheerful
acceptance of them. To Miss Bart, as to her mother, acquiescence in
dinginess was evidence of stupidity; and there were moments when, in the
consciousness of her own power to look and to be so exactly what the
occasion required, she almost felt that other girls were plain and
inferior from choice. Certainly no one need have confessed such
acquiescence in her lot as was revealed in the "useful" colour of Gerty
Farish's gown and the subdued lines of her hat: it is almost as stupid to
let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them
proclaim that you think you are beautiful.

Of course, being fatally poor and dingy, it was wise of Gerty to have
taken up philanthropy and symphony concerts; but there was something
irritating in her assumption that existence yielded no higher pleasures,
and that one might get as much interest and excitement out of life in a
cramped flat as in the splendours of the Van Osburgh establishment.
Today, however, her chirping enthusiasms did not irritate Lily. They
seemed only to throw her own exceptionalness into becoming relief, and
give a soaring vastness to her scheme of life.

"Do let us go and take a peep at the presents before everyone else leaves
the dining-room!" suggested Miss Farish, linking her arm in her friend's.
It was characteristic of her to take a sentimental and unenvious interest
in all the details of a wedding: she was the kind of person who always
kept her handkerchief out during the service, and departed clutching a
box of wedding-cake.

"Isn't everything beautifully done?" she pursued, as they entered the
distant drawing-room assigned to the display of Miss Van Osburgh's bridal
spoils. "I always say no one does things better than cousin Grace! Did
you ever taste anything more delicious than that MOUSSE of lobster with
champagne sauce? I made up my mind weeks ago that I wouldn't miss this
wedding, and just fancy how delightfully it all came about. When Lawrence
Selden heard I was coming, he insisted on fetching me himself and driving
me to the station, and when we go back this evening I am to dine with him
at Sherry's. I really feel as excited as if I were getting married
myself!"

Lily smiled: she knew that Selden had always been kind to his dull
cousin, and she had sometimes wondered why he wasted so much time in such
an unremunerative manner; but now the thought gave her a vague pleasure.

"Do you see him often?" she asked.

"Yes; he is very good about dropping in on Sundays. And now and then we
do a play together; but lately I haven't seen much of him. He doesn't
look well, and he seems nervous and unsettled.  The dear fellow! I do
wish he would marry some nice girl. I told him so today, but he said he
didn't care for the really nice ones, and the other kind didn't care for
him--but that was just his joke, of course. He could never marry a girl
who WASN'T nice.  Oh, my dear, did you ever see such pearls?"

They had paused before the table on which the bride's jewels were
displayed, and Lily's heart gave an envious throb as she caught the
refraction of light from their surfaces--the milky gleam of perfectly
matched pearls, the flash of rubies relieved against contrasting velvet,
the intense blue rays of sapphires kindled into light by surrounding
diamonds: all these precious tints enhanced and deepened by the varied
art of their setting. The glow of the stones warmed Lily's veins like
wine. More completely than any other expression of wealth they symbolized
the life she longed to lead, the life of fastidious aloofness and
refinement in which every detail should have the finish of a jewel, and
the whole form a harmonious setting to her own jewel-like rareness.

"Oh, Lily, do look at this diamond pendant--it's as big as a
dinner-plate! Who can have given it?" Miss Farish bent short-sightedly
over the accompanying card. "MR. SIMON ROSEDALE.  What, that horrid man?
Oh, yes--I remember he's a friend of Jack's, and I suppose cousin Grace
had to ask him here today; but she must rather hate having to let Gwen
accept such a present from him."

Lily smiled. She doubted Mrs. Van Osburgh's reluctance, but was aware of
Miss Farish's habit of ascribing her own delicacies of feeling to the
persons least likely to be encumbered by them.

"Well, if Gwen doesn't care to be seen wearing it she can always exchange
it for something else," she remarked.

"Ah, here is something so much prettier," Miss Farish continued.  "Do
look at this exquisite white sapphire. I'm sure the person who chose it
must have taken particular pains. What is the name?  Percy Gryce? Ah,
then I'm not surprised!" She smiled significantly as she replaced the
card. "Of course you've heard that he's perfectly devoted to Evie Van
Osburgh? Cousin Grace is so pleased about it--it's quite a romance! He
met her first at the George Dorsets', only about six weeks ago, and it's
just the nicest possible marriage for dear Evie. Oh, I don't mean the
money--of course she has plenty of her own--but she's such a quiet
stay-at-home kind of girl, and it seems he has just the same tastes; so
they are exactly suited to each other."

Lily stood staring vacantly at the white sapphire on its velvet bed.
Evie Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce? The names rang derisively through her
brain. EVIE VAN OSBURGH? The youngest, dumpiest, dullest of the four dull
and dumpy daughters whom Mrs. Van Osburgh, with unsurpassed astuteness,
had "placed" one by one in enviable niches of existence!  Ah, lucky girls
who grow up in the shelter of a mother's love--a mother who knows how to
contrive opportunities without conceding favours, how to take advantage
of propinquity without allowing appetite to be dulled by habit! The
cleverest girl may miscalculate where her own interests are concerned,
may yield too much at one moment and withdraw too far at the next: it
takes a mother's unerring vigilance and foresight to land her daughters
safely in the arms of wealth and suitability.

Lily's passing light-heartedness sank beneath a renewed sense of failure.
Life was too stupid, too blundering! Why should Percy Gryce's millions be
joined to another great fortune, why should this clumsy girl be put in
possession of powers she would never know how to use?

She was roused from these speculations by a familiar touch on her arm,
and turning saw Gus Trenor beside her. She felt a thrill of vexation:
what right had he to touch her? Luckily Gerty Farish had wandered off to
the next table, and they were alone.

Trenor, looking stouter than ever in his tight frock-coat, and
unbecomingly flushed by the bridal libations, gazed at her with
undisguised approval.

"By Jove, Lily, you do look a stunner!" He had slipped insensibly into
the use of her Christian name, and she had never found the right moment
to correct him. Besides, in her set all the men and women called each
other by their Christian names; it was only on Trenor's lips that the
familiar address had an unpleasant significance.

"Well," he continued, still jovially impervious to her annoyance, "have
you made up your mind which of these little trinkets you mean to
duplicate at Tiffany's tomorrow? I've got a cheque for you in my pocket
that will go a long way in that line!"

Lily gave him a startled look: his voice was louder than usual, and the
room was beginning to fill with people. But as her glance assured her
that they were still beyond ear-shot a sense of pleasure replaced her
apprehension.

"Another dividend?" she asked, smiling and drawing near him in the desire
not to be overheard.

"Well, not exactly: I sold out on the rise and I've pulled off four thou'
for you. Not so bad for a beginner, eh? I suppose you'll begin to think
you're a pretty knowing speculator. And perhaps you won't think poor old
Gus such an awful ass as some people do."

"I think you the kindest of friends; but I can't thank you properly now."

She let her eyes shine into his with a look that made up for the
hand-clasp he would have claimed if they had been alone--and how glad she
was that they were not! The news filled her with the glow produced by a
sudden cessation of physical pain. The world was not so stupid and
blundering after all: now and then a stroke of luck came to the
unluckiest. At the thought her spirits began to rise: it was
characteristic of her that one trifling piece of good fortune should give
wings to all her hopes. Instantly came the reflection that Percy Gryce
was not irretrievably lost; and she smiled to think of the excitement of
recapturing him from Evie Van Osburgh. What chance could such a simpleton
have against her if she chose to exert herself? She glanced about, hoping
to catch a glimpse of Gryce; but her eyes lit instead on the glossy
countenance of Mr. Rosedale, who was slipping through the crowd with an
air half obsequious, half obtrusive, as though, the moment his presence
was recognized, it would swell to the dimensions of the room.

Not wishing to be the means of effecting this enlargement, Lily quickly
transferred her glance to Trenor, to whom the expression of her gratitude
seemed not to have brought the complete gratification she had meant it to
give.

"Hang thanking me--I don't want to be thanked, but I SHOULD like the
chance to say two words to you now and then," he grumbled. "I thought you
were going to spend the whole autumn with us, and I've hardly laid eyes
on you for the last month. Why can't you come back to Bellomont this
evening? We're all alone, and Judy is as cross as two sticks. Do come and
cheer a fellow up. If you say yes I'll run you over in the motor, and you
can telephone your maid to bring your traps from town by the next train."

Lily shook her head with a charming semblance of regret. "I wish I
could--but it's quite impossible. My aunt has come back to town, and I
must be with her for the next few days."

"Well, I've seen a good deal less of you since we've got to be such pals
than I used to when you were Judy's friend," he continued with
unconscious penetration.

"When I was Judy's friend? Am I not her friend still? Really, you say the
most absurd things! If I were always at Bellomont you would tire of me
much sooner than Judy--but come and see me at my aunt's the next
afternoon you are in town; then we can have a nice quiet talk, and you
can tell me how I had better invest my fortune."

It was true that, during the last three or four weeks, she had absented
herself from Bellomont on the pretext of having other visits to pay; but
she now began to feel that the reckoning she had thus contrived to evade
had rolled up interest in the interval.

The prospect of the nice quiet talk did not appear as all-sufficing to
Trenor as she had hoped, and his brows continued to lower as he said:
"Oh, I don't know that I can promise you a fresh tip every day. But
there's one thing you might do for me; and that is, just to be a little
civil to Rosedale. Judy has promised to ask him to dine when we get to
town, but I can't induce her to have him at Bellomont, and if you would
let me bring him up now it would make a lot of difference. I don't
believe two women have spoken to him this afternoon, and I can tell you
he's a chap it pays to be decent to."

Miss Bart made an impatient movement, but suppressed the words which
seemed about to accompany it. After all, this was an unexpectedly easy
way of acquitting her debt; and had she not reasons of her own for
wishing to be civil to Mr. Rosedale?

"Oh, bring him by all means," she said smiling; "perhaps I can get a tip
out of him on my own account."

Trenor paused abruptly, and his eyes fixed themselves on hers with a look
which made her change colour.

"I say, you know--you'll please remember he's a blooming bounder," he
said; and with a slight laugh she turned toward the open window near
which they had been standing.

The throng in the room had increased, and she felt a desire for space and
fresh air. Both of these she found on the terrace, where only a few men
were lingering over cigarettes and liqueur, while scattered couples
strolled across the lawn to the autumn-tinted borders of the
flower-garden.

As she emerged, a man moved toward her from the knot of smokers, and she
found herself face to face with Selden. The stir of the pulses which his
nearness always caused was increased by a slight sense of constraint.
They had not met since their Sunday afternoon walk at Bellomont, and that
episode was still so vivid to her that she could hardly believe him to be
less conscious of it. But his greeting expressed no more than the
satisfaction which every pretty woman expects to see reflected in
masculine eyes; and the discovery, if distasteful to her vanity, was
reassuring to her nerves. Between the relief of her escape from Trenor,
and the vague apprehension of her meeting with Rosedale, it was pleasant
to rest a moment on the sense of complete understanding which Lawrence
Selden's manner always conveyed.

"This is luck," he said smiling. "I was wondering if I should be able to
have a word with you before the special snatches us away.  I came with
Gerty Farish, and promised not to let her miss the train, but I am sure
she is still extracting sentimental solace from the wedding presents. She
appears to regard their number and value as evidence of the disinterested
affection of the contracting parties."

There was not the least trace of embarrassment in his voice, and as he
spoke, leaning slightly against the jamb of the window, and letting his
eyes rest on her in the frank enjoyment of her grace, she felt with a
faint chill of regret that he had gone back without an effort to the
footing on which they had stood before their last talk together. Her
vanity was stung by the sight of his unscathed smile. She longed to be to
him something more than a piece of sentient prettiness, a passing
diversion to his eye and brain; and the longing betrayed itself in her
reply.

"Ah," she said, "I envy Gerty that power she has of dressing up with
romance all our ugly and prosaic arrangements! I have never recovered my
self-respect since you showed me how poor and unimportant my ambitions
were."

The words were hardly spoken when she realized their infelicity.  It
seemed to be her fate to appear at her worst to Selden.

"I thought, on the contrary," he returned lightly, "that I had been the
means of proving they were more important to you than anything else."

It was as if the eager current of her being had been checked by a sudden
obstacle which drove it back upon itself. She looked at him helplessly,
like a hurt or frightened child: this real self of hers, which he had the
faculty of drawing out of the depths, was so little accustomed to go
alone!

The appeal of her helplessness touched in him, as it always did, a latent
chord of inclination. It would have meant nothing to him to discover that
his nearness made her more brilliant, but this glimpse of a twilight mood
to which he alone had the clue seemed once more to set him in a world
apart with her.

"At least you can't think worse things of me than you say!" she exclaimed
with a trembling laugh; but before he could answer, the flow of
comprehension between them was abruptly stayed by the reappearance of Gus
Trenor, who advanced with Mr. Rosedale in his wake.

"Hang it, Lily, I thought you'd given me the slip: Rosedale and I have
been hunting all over for you!"

His voice had a note of conjugal familiarity: Miss Bart fancied she
detected in Rosedale's eye a twinkling perception of the fact, and the
idea turned her dislike of him to repugnance.

She returned his profound bow with a slight nod, made more disdainful by
the sense of Selden's surprise that she should number Rosedale among her
acquaintances. Trenor had turned away, and his companion continued to
stand before Miss Bart, alert and expectant, his lips parted in a smile
at whatever she might be about to say, and his very back conscious of the
privilege of being seen with her.

It was the moment for tact; for the quick bridging over of gaps; but
Selden still leaned against the window, a detached observer of the scene,
and under the spell of his observation Lily felt herself powerless to
exert her usual arts. The dread of Selden's suspecting that there was any
need for her to propitiate such a man as Rosedale checked the trivial
phrases of politeness.  Rosedale still stood before her in an expectant
attitude, and she continued to face him in silence, her glance just level
with his polished baldness. The look put the finishing touch to what her
silence implied.

He reddened slowly, shifting from one foot to the other, fingered the
plump black pearl in his tie, and gave a nervous twist to his moustache;
then, running his eye over her, he drew back, and said, with a
side-glance at Selden: "Upon my soul, I never saw a more ripping get-up.
Is that the last creation of the dress-maker you go to see at the
Benedick? If so, I wonder all the other women don't go to her too!"

The words were projected sharply against Lily's silence, and she saw in a
flash that her own act had given them their emphasis. In ordinary talk
they might have passed unheeded; but following on her prolonged pause
they acquired a special meaning. She felt, without looking, that Selden
had immediately seized it, and would inevitably connect the allusion with
her visit to himself. The consciousness increased her irritation against
Rosedale, but also her feeling that now, if ever, was the moment to
propitiate him, hateful as it was to do so in Selden's presence.

"How do you know the other women don't go to my dress-maker?" she
returned. "You see I'm not afraid to give her address to my friends!"

Her glance and accent so plainly included Rosedale in this privileged
circle that his small eyes puckered with gratification, and a knowing
smile drew up his moustache.

"By Jove, you needn't be!" he declared. "You could give 'em the whole
outfit and win at a canter!"

"Ah, that's nice of you; and it would be nicer still if you would carry
me off to a quiet corner, and get me a glass of lemonade or some innocent
drink before we all have to rush for the train."

She turned away as she spoke, letting him strut at her side through the
gathering groups on the terrace, while every nerve in her throbbed with
the consciousness of what Selden must have thought of the scene.

But under her angry sense of the perverseness of things, and the light
surface of her talk with Rosedale, a third idea persisted: she did not
mean to leave without an attempt to discover the truth about Percy Gryce.
Chance, or perhaps his own resolve, had kept them apart since his hasty
withdrawal from Bellomont; but Miss Bart was an expert in making the most
of the unexpected, and the distasteful incidents of the last few
minutes--the revelation to Selden of precisely that part of her life
which she most wished him to ignore--increased her longing for shelter,
for escape from such humiliating contingencies. Any definite situation
would be more tolerable than this buffeting of chances, which kept her in
an attitude of uneasy alertness toward every possibility of life.

Indoors there was a general sense of dispersal in the air, as of an
audience gathering itself up for departure after the principal actors had
left the stage; but among the remaining groups, Lily could discover
neither Gryce nor the youngest Miss Van Osburgh.  That both should be
missing struck her with foreboding; and she charmed Mr. Rosedale by
proposing that they should make their way to the conservatories at the
farther end of the house. There were just enough people left in the long
suite of rooms to make their progress conspicuous, and Lily was aware of
being followed by looks of amusement and interrogation, which glanced off
as harmlessly from her indifference as from her companion's
self-satisfaction. She cared very little at that moment about being seen
with Rosedale: all her thoughts were centred on the object of her search.
The latter, however, was not discoverable in the conservatories, and
Lily, oppressed by a sudden conviction of failure, was casting about for
a way to rid herself of her now superfluous companion, when they came
upon Mrs. Van Osburgh, flushed and exhausted, but beaming with the
consciousness of duty performed.

She glanced at them a moment with the benign but vacant eye of the tired
hostess, to whom her guests have become mere whirling spots in a
kaleidoscope of fatigue; then her attention became suddenly fixed, and
she seized on Miss Bart with a confidential gesture. "My dear Lily, I
haven't had time for a word with you, and now I suppose you are just off.
Have you seen Evie? She's been looking everywhere for you: she wanted to
tell you her little secret; but I daresay you have guessed it already.
The engagement is not to be announced till next week--but you are such a
friend of Mr. Gryce's that they both wished you to be the first to know
of their happiness."



In Mrs. Peniston's youth, fashion had returned to town in October;
therefore on the tenth day of the month the blinds of her Fifth Avenue
residence were drawn up, and the eyes of the Dying Gladiator in bronze
who occupied the drawing-room window resumed their survey of that
deserted thoroughfare.

The first two weeks after her return represented to Mrs. Peniston the
domestic equivalent of a religious retreat. She "went through" the linen
and blankets in the precise spirit of the penitent exploring the inner
folds of conscience; she sought for moths as the stricken soul seeks for
lurking infirmities. The topmost shelf of every closet was made to yield
up its secret, cellar and coal-bin were probed to their darkest depths
and, as a final stage in the lustral rites, the entire house was swathed
in penitential white and deluged with expiatory soapsuds.

It was on this phase of the proceedings that Miss Bart entered on the
afternoon of her return from the Van Osburgh wedding. The journey back to
town had not been calculated to soothe her nerves. Though Evie Van
Osburgh's engagement was still officially a secret, it was one of which
the innumerable intimate friends of the family were already possessed;
and the trainful of returning guests buzzed with allusions and
anticipations. Lily was acutely aware of her own part in this drama of
innuendo: she knew the exact quality of the amusement the situation
evoked. The crude forms in which her friends took their pleasure included
a loud enjoyment of such complications: the zest of surprising destiny in
the act of playing a practical joke. Lily knew well enough how to bear
herself in difficult situations. She had, to a shade, the exact manner
between victory and defeat: every insinuation was shed without an effort
by the bright indifference of her manner.  But she was beginning to feel
the strain of the attitude; the reaction was more rapid, and she lapsed
to a deeper self-disgust.


As was always the case with her, this moral repulsion found a physical
outlet in a quickened distaste for her surroundings.  She revolted from
the complacent ugliness of Mrs. Peniston's black walnut, from the
slippery gloss of the vestibule tiles, and the mingled odour of sapolio
and furniture-polish that met her at the door.

The stairs were still carpetless, and on the way up to her room she was
arrested on the landing by an encroaching tide of soapsuds. Gathering up
her skirts, she drew aside with an impatient gesture; and as she did so
she had the odd sensation of having already found herself in the same
situation but in different surroundings. It seemed to her that she was
again descending the staircase from Selden's rooms; and looking down to
remonstrate with the dispenser of the soapy flood, she found herself met
by a lifted stare which had once before confronted her under similar
circumstances. It was the char-woman of the Benedick who, resting on
crimson elbows, examined her with the same unflinching curiosity, the
same apparent reluctance to let her pass. On this occasion, however, Miss
Bart was on her own ground.

"Don't you see that I wish to go by? Please move your pail," she said
sharply.

The woman at first seemed not to hear; then, without a word of excuse,
she pushed back her pail and dragged a wet floor-cloth across the
landing, keeping her eyes fixed on Lily while the latter swept by. It was
insufferable that Mrs. Peniston should have such creatures about the
house; and Lily entered her room resolved that the woman should be
dismissed that evening.

Mrs. Peniston, however, was at the moment inaccessible to remonstrance:
since early morning she had been shut up with her maid, going over her
furs, a process which formed the culminating episode in the drama of
household renovation. In the evening also Lily found herself alone, for
her aunt, who rarely dined out, had responded to the summons of a Van
Alstyne cousin who was passing through town. The house, in its state of
unnatural immaculateness and order, was as dreary as a tomb, and as Lily,
turning from her brief repast between shrouded sideboards, wandered into
the newly-uncovered glare of the drawing-room she felt as though she were
buried alive in the stifling limits of Mrs. Peniston's existence.

She usually contrived to avoid being at home during the season of
domestic renewal. On the present occasion, however, a variety of reasons
had combined to bring her to town; and foremost among them was the fact
that she had fewer invitations than usual for the autumn. She had so long
been accustomed to pass from one country-house to another, till the close
of the holidays brought her friends to town, that the unfilled gaps of
time confronting her produced a sharp sense of waning popularity. It was
as she had said to Selden--people were tired of her.  They would welcome
her in a new character, but as Miss Bart they knew her by heart.  She
knew herself by heart too, and was sick of the old story.  There were
moments when she longed blindly for anything different, anything strange,
remote and untried; but the utmost reach of her imagination did not go
beyond picturing her usual life in a new setting. She could not figure
herself as anywhere but in a drawing-room, diffusing elegance as a flower
sheds perfume.

Meanwhile, as October advanced she had to face the alternative of
returning to the Trenors or joining her aunt in town. Even the desolating
dulness of New York in October, and the soapy discomforts of Mrs.
Peniston's interior, seemed preferable to what might await her at
Bellomont; and with an air of heroic devotion she announced her intention
of remaining with her aunt till the holidays.

Sacrifices of this nature are sometimes received with feelings as mixed
as those which actuate them; and Mrs. Peniston remarked to her
confidential maid that, if any of the family were to be with her at such
a crisis (though for forty years she had been thought competent to see to
the hanging of her own curtains), she would certainly have preferred Miss
Grace to Miss Lily. Grace Stepney was an obscure cousin, of adaptable
manners and vicarious interests, who "ran in" to sit with Mrs. Peniston
when Lily dined out too continuously; who played bezique, picked up
dropped stitches, read out the deaths from the Times, and sincerely
admired the purple satin drawing-room curtains, the Dying Gladiator in
the window, and the seven-by-five painting of Niagara which represented
the one artistic excess of Mr. Peniston's temperate career.

Mrs. Peniston, under ordinary circumstances, was as much bored by her
excellent cousin as the recipient of such services usually is by the
person who performs them. She greatly preferred the brilliant and
unreliable Lily, who did not know one end of a crochet-needle from the
other, and had frequently wounded her susceptibilities by suggesting that
the drawing-room should be "done over." But when it came to hunting for
missing napkins, or helping to decide whether the backstairs needed
re-carpeting, Grace's judgment was certainly sounder than Lily's: not to
mention the fact that the latter resented the smell of beeswax and brown
soap, and behaved as though she thought a house ought to keep clean of
itself, without extraneous assistance.

Seated under the cheerless blaze of the drawing-room chandelier--Mrs.
Peniston never lit the lamps unless there was "company"--Lily seemed to
watch her own figure retreating down vistas of neutral-tinted dulness to
a middle age like Grace Stepney's. When she ceased to amuse Judy Trenor
and her friends she would have to fall back on amusing Mrs. Peniston;
whichever way she looked she saw only a future of servitude to the whims
of others, never the possibility of asserting her own eager individuality.

A ring at the door-bell, sounding emphatically through the empty house,
roused her suddenly to the extent of her boredom. It was as though all
the weariness of the past months had culminated in the vacuity of that
interminable evening. If only the ring meant a summons from the outer
world--a token that she was still remembered and wanted!

After some delay a parlour-maid presented herself with the announcement
that there was a person outside who was asking to see Miss Bart; and on
Lily's pressing for a more specific description, she added:

"It's Mrs. Haffen, Miss; she won't say what she wants."

Lily, to whom the name conveyed nothing, opened the door upon a woman in
a battered bonnet, who stood firmly planted under the hall-light.  The
glare of the unshaded gas shone familiarly on her pock-marked face and
the reddish baldness visible through thin strands of straw-coloured hair.
Lily looked at the char-woman in surprise.

"Do you wish to see me?" she asked.

"I should like to say a word to you, Miss." The tone was neither
aggressive nor conciliatory: it revealed nothing of the speaker's errand.
Nevertheless, some precautionary instinct warned Lily to withdraw beyond
ear-shot of the hovering parlour-maid.

She signed to Mrs. Haffen to follow her into the drawing-room, and closed
the door when they had entered.

"What is it that you wish?" she enquired.

The char-woman, after the manner of her kind, stood with her arms folded
in her shawl. Unwinding the latter, she produced a small parcel wrapped
in dirty newspaper.

"I have something here that you might like to see, Miss Bart." She spoke
the name with an unpleasant emphasis, as though her knowing it made a
part of her reason for being there. To Lily the intonation sounded like a
threat.

"You have found something belonging to me?" she asked, extending her hand.

Mrs. Haffen drew back. "Well, if it comes to that, I guess it's mine as
much as anybody's," she returned.

Lily looked at her perplexedly. She was sure, now, that her visitor's
manner conveyed a threat; but, expert as she was in certain directions,
there was nothing in her experience to prepare her for the exact
significance of the present scene. She felt, however, that it must be
ended as promptly as possible.

"I don't understand; if this parcel is not mine, why have you asked for
me?"

The woman was unabashed by the question. She was evidently prepared to
answer it, but like all her class she had to go a long way back to make a
beginning, and it was only after a pause that she replied: "My husband
was janitor to the Benedick till the first of the month; since then he
can't get nothing to do."

Lily remained silent and she continued: "It wasn't no fault of our own,
neither: the agent had another man he wanted the place for, and we was
put out, bag and baggage, just to suit his fancy.  I had a long sickness
last winter, and an operation that ate up all we'd put by; and it's hard
for me and the children, Haffen being so long out of a job."

After all, then, she had come only to ask Miss Bart to find a place for
her husband; or, more probably, to seek the young lady's intervention
with Mrs. Peniston. Lily had such an air of always getting what she
wanted that she was used to being appealed to as an intermediary, and,
relieved of her vague apprehension, she took refuge in the conventional
formula.

"I am sorry you have been in trouble," she said.

"Oh, that we have, Miss, and it's on'y just beginning. If on'y we'd 'a
got another situation--but the agent, he's dead against us. It ain't no
fault of ours, neither, but----"

At this point Lily's impatience overcame her. "If you have anything to
say to me----" she interposed.

The woman's resentment of the rebuff seemed to spur her lagging ideas.

"Yes, Miss; I'm coming to that," she said. She paused again, with her
eyes on Lily, and then continued, in a tone of diffuse narrative: "When
we was at the Benedick I had charge of some of the gentlemen's rooms;
leastways, I swep' 'em out on Saturdays.  Some of the gentlemen got the
greatest sight of letters: I never saw the like of it. Their waste-paper
baskets 'd be fairly brimming, and papers falling over on the floor.
Maybe havin' so many is how they get so careless. Some of 'em is worse
than others. Mr. Selden, Mr. Lawrence Selden, he was always one of the
carefullest: burnt his letters in winter, and tore 'em in little bits in
summer. But sometimes he'd have so many he'd just bunch 'em together, the
way the others did, and tear the lot through once--like this."

While she spoke she had loosened the string from the parcel in her hand,
and now she drew forth a letter which she laid on the table between Miss
Bart and herself. As she had said, the letter was torn in two; but with a
rapid gesture she laid the torn edges together and smoothed out the page.

A wave of indignation swept over Lily. She felt herself in the presence
of something vile, as yet but dimly conjectured--the kind of vileness of
which people whispered, but which she had never thought of as touching
her own life. She drew back with a motion of disgust, but her withdrawal
was checked by a sudden discovery: under the glare of Mrs. Peniston's
chandelier she had recognized the hand-writing of the letter. It was a
large disjointed hand, with a flourish of masculinity which but slightly
disguised its rambling weakness, and the words, scrawled in heavy ink on
pale-tinted notepaper, smote on Lily's ear as though she had heard them
spoken.

At first she did not grasp the full import of the situation. She
understood only that before her lay a letter written by Bertha Dorset,
and addressed, presumably, to Lawrence Selden. There was no date, but the
blackness of the ink proved the writing to be comparatively recent.  The
packet in Mrs. Haffen's hand doubtless contained more letters of the same
kind--a dozen, Lily conjectured from its thickness. The letter before her
was short, but its few words, which had leapt into her brain before she
was conscious of reading them, told a long history--a history over which,
for the last four years, the friends of the writer had smiled and
shrugged, viewing it merely as one among the countless "good situations"
of the mundane comedy. Now the other side presented itself to Lily, the
volcanic nether side of the surface over which conjecture and innuendo
glide so lightly till the first fissure turns their whisper to a shriek.
Lily knew that there is nothing society resents so much as having given
its protection to those who have not known how to profit by it: it is for
having betrayed its connivance that the body social punishes the offender
who is found out. And in this case there was no doubt of the issue. The
code of Lily's world decreed that a woman's husband should be the only
judge of her conduct: she was technically above suspicion while she had
the shelter of his approval, or even of his indifference. But with a man
of George Dorset's temper there could be no thought of condonation--the
possessor of his wife's letters could overthrow with a touch the whole
structure of her existence. And into what hands Bertha Dorset's secret
had been delivered! For a moment the irony of the coincidence tinged
Lily's disgust with a confused sense of triumph. But the disgust
prevailed--all her instinctive resistances, of taste, of training, of
blind inherited scruples, rose against the other feeling. Her strongest
sense was one of personal contamination.

She moved away, as though to put as much distance as possible between
herself and her visitor. "I know nothing of these letters," she said; "I
have no idea why you have brought them here."

Mrs. Haffen faced her steadily. "I'll tell you why, Miss.  I brought 'em
to you to sell, because I ain't got no other way of raising money, and if
we don't pay our rent by tomorrow night we'll be put out. I never done
anythin' of the kind before, and if you'd speak to Mr. Selden or to Mr.
Rosedale about getting Haffen taken on again at the Benedick--I seen you
talking to Mr. Rosedale on the steps that day you come out of Mr.
Selden's rooms----"

The blood rushed to Lily's forehead. She understood now--Mrs. Haffen
supposed her to be the writer of the letters. In the first leap of her
anger she was about to ring and order the woman out; but an obscure
impulse restrained her. The mention of Selden's name had started a new
train of thought. Bertha Dorset's letters were nothing to her--they might
go where the current of chance carried them! But Selden was inextricably
involved in their fate.  Men do not, at worst, suffer much from such
exposure; and in this instance the flash of divination which had carried
the meaning of the letters to Lily's brain had revealed also that they
were appeals--repeated and therefore probably unanswered--for the renewal
of a tie which time had evidently relaxed.  Nevertheless, the fact that
the correspondence had been allowed to fall into strange hands would
convict Selden of negligence in a matter where the world holds it least
pardonable; and there were graver risks to consider where a man of
Dorset's ticklish balance was concerned.

If she weighed all these things it was unconsciously: she was aware only
of feeling that Selden would wish the letters rescued, and that therefore
she must obtain possession of them. Beyond that her mind did not travel.
She had, indeed, a quick vision of returning the packet to Bertha Dorset,
and of the opportunities the restitution offered; but this thought lit up
abysses from which she shrank back ashamed.

Meanwhile Mrs. Haffen, prompt to perceive her hesitation, had already
opened the packet and ranged its contents on the table.  All the letters
had been pieced together with strips of thin paper. Some were in small
fragments, the others merely torn in half. Though there were not many,
thus spread out they nearly covered the table. Lily's glance fell on a
word here and there--then she said in a low voice: "What do you wish me
to pay you?"

Mrs. Haffen's face reddened with satisfaction. It was clear that the
young lady was badly frightened, and Mrs. Haffen was the woman to make
the most of such fears. Anticipating an easier victory than she had
foreseen, she named an exorbitant sum.

But Miss Bart showed herself a less ready prey than might have been
expected from her imprudent opening. She refused to pay the price named,
and after a moment's hesitation, met it by a counter-offer of half the
amount.

Mrs. Haffen immediately stiffened. Her hand travelled toward the
outspread letters, and folding them slowly, she made as though to restore
them to their wrapping.

"I guess they're worth more to you than to me, Miss, but the poor has got
to live as well as the rich," she observed sententiously.


Lily was throbbing with fear, but the insinuation fortified her
resistance.

"You are mistaken," she said indifferently. "I have offered all I am
willing to give for the letters; but there may be other ways of getting
them."

Mrs. Haffen raised a suspicious glance: she was too experienced not to
know that the traffic she was engaged in had perils as great as its
rewards, and she had a vision of the elaborate machinery of revenge which
a word of this commanding young lady's might set in motion.

She applied the corner of her shawl to her eyes, and murmured through it
that no good came of bearing too hard on the poor, but that for her part
she had never been mixed up in such a business before, and that on her
honour as a Christian all she and Haffen had thought of was that the
letters mustn't go any farther.

Lily stood motionless, keeping between herself and the char-woman the
greatest distance compatible with the need of speaking in low tones.  The
idea of bargaining for the letters was intolerable to her, but she knew
that, if she appeared to weaken, Mrs. Haffen would at once increase her
original demand.

She could never afterward recall how long the duel lasted, or what was
the decisive stroke which finally, after a lapse of time recorded in
minutes by the clock, in hours by the precipitate beat of her pulses, put
her in possession of the letters; she knew only that the door had finally
closed, and that she stood alone with the packet in her hand.

She had no idea of reading the letters; even to unfold Mrs. Haffen's
dirty newspaper would have seemed degrading. But what did she intend to
do with its contents? The recipient of the letters had meant to destroy
them, and it was her duty to carry out his intention. She had no right to
keep them--to do so was to lessen whatever merit lay in having secured
their possession. But how destroy them so effectually that there should
be no second risk of their falling in such hands? Mrs. Peniston's icy
drawing-room grate shone with a forbidding lustre: the fire, like the
lamps, was never lit except when there was company.

Miss Bart was turning to carry the letters upstairs when she heard the
opening of the outer door, and her aunt entered the drawing-room. Mrs.
Peniston was a small plump woman, with a colourless skin lined with
trivial wrinkles. Her grey hair was arranged with precision, and her
clothes looked excessively new and yet slightly old-fashioned. They were
always black and tightly fitting, with an expensive glitter: she was the
kind of woman who wore jet at breakfast. Lily had never seen her when she
was not cuirassed in shining black, with small tight boots, and an air of
being packed and ready to start; yet she never started.

She looked about the drawing-room with an expression of minute scrutiny.
"I saw a streak of light under one of the blinds as I drove up: it's
extraordinary that I can never teach that woman to draw them down evenly."

Having corrected the irregularity, she seated herself on one of the
glossy purple arm-chairs; Mrs. Peniston always sat on a chair, never in
it.

Then she turned her glance to Miss Bart. "My dear, you look tired; I
suppose it's the excitement of the wedding. Cornelia Van Alstyne was full
of it: Molly was there, and Gerty Farish ran in for a minute to tell us
about it. I think it was odd, their serving melons before the CONSOMME: a
wedding breakfast should always begin with CONSOMME. Molly didn't care
for the bridesmaids' dresses. She had it straight from Julia Melson that
they cost three hundred dollars apiece at Celeste's, but she says they
didn't look it. I'm glad you decided not to be a bridesmaid; that shade
of salmon-pink wouldn't have suited you." Mrs. Peniston delighted in
discussing the minutest details of festivities in which she had not taken
part. Nothing would have induced her to undergo the exertion and fatigue
of attending the Van Osburgh wedding, but so great was her interest in
the event that, having heard two versions of it, she now prepared to
extract a third from her niece. Lily, however, had been deplorably
careless in noting the particulars of the entertainment. She had failed
to observe the colour of Mrs. Van Osburgh's gown, and could not even say
whether the old Van Osburgh Sevres had been used at the bride's table:
Mrs. Peniston, in short, found that she was of more service as a listener
than as a narrator.

"Really, Lily, I don't see why you took the trouble to go to the wedding,
if you don't remember what happened or whom you saw there.  When I was a
girl I used to keep the MENU of every dinner I went to, and write the
names of the people on the back; and I never threw away my cotillion
favours till after your uncle's death, when it seemed unsuitable to have
so many coloured things about the house. I had a whole closet-full, I
remember; and I can tell to this day what balls I got them at. Molly Van
Alstyne reminds me of what I was at that age; it's wonderful how she
notices. She was able to tell her mother exactly how the wedding-dress
was cut, and we knew at once, from the fold in the back, that it must
have come from Paquin."

Mrs. Peniston rose abruptly, and, advancing to the ormolu clock
surmounted by a helmeted Minerva, which throned on the chimney-piece
between two malachite vases, passed her lace handkerchief between the
helmet and its visor.

"I knew it--the parlour-maid never dusts there!" she exclaimed,
triumphantly displaying a minute spot on the handkerchief; then,
reseating herself, she went on: "Molly thought Mrs. Dorset the
best-dressed woman at the wedding. I've no doubt her dress DID cost more
than any one else's, but I can't quite like the idea--a combination of
sable and POINT DE MILAN. It seems she goes to a new man in Paris, who
won't take an order till his client has spent a day with him at his villa
at Neuilly. He says he must study his subject's home life--a most
peculiar arrangement, I should say! But Mrs. Dorset told Molly about it
herself: she said the villa was full of the most exquisite things and she
was really sorry to leave. Molly said she never saw her looking better;
she was in tremendous spirits, and said she had made a match between Evie
Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. She really seems to have a very good
influence on young men. I hear she is interesting herself now in that
silly Silverton boy, who has had his head turned by Carry Fisher, and has
been gambling so dreadfully. Well, as I was saying, Evie is really
engaged: Mrs. Dorset had her to stay with Percy Gryce, and managed it
all, and Grace Van Osburgh is in the seventh heaven--she had almost
despaired of marrying Evie."

Mrs. Peniston again paused, but this time her scrutiny addressed itself,
not to the furniture, but to her niece.

"Cornelia Van Alstyne was so surprised: she had heard that you were to
marry young Gryce. She saw the Wetheralls just after they had stopped
with you at Bellomont, and Alice Wetherall was quite sure there was an
engagement. She said that when Mr. Gryce left unexpectedly one morning,
they all thought he had rushed to town for the ring."

Lily rose and moved toward the door.

"I believe I AM tired: I think I will go to bed," she said; and Mrs.
Peniston, suddenly distracted by the discovery that the easel sustaining
the late Mr. Peniston's crayon-portrait was not exactly in line with the
sofa in front of it, presented an absent-minded brow to her kiss.

In her own room Lily turned up the gas-jet and glanced toward the grate.
It was as brilliantly polished as the one below, but here at least she
could burn a few papers with less risk of incurring her aunt's
disapproval. She made no immediate motion to do so, however, but dropping
into a chair looked wearily about her. Her room was large and
comfortably-furnished--it was the envy and admiration of poor Grace
Stepney, who boarded; but, contrasted with the light tints and luxurious
appointments of the guest-rooms where so many weeks of Lily's existence
were spent, it seemed as dreary as a prison. The monumental wardrobe and
bedstead of black walnut had migrated from Mr. Peniston's bedroom, and
the magenta "flock" wall-paper, of a pattern dear to the early 'sixties,
was hung with large steel engravings of an anecdotic character. Lily had
tried to mitigate this charmless background by a few frivolous touches,
in the shape of a lace-decked toilet table and a little painted desk
surmounted by photographs; but the futility of the attempt struck her as
she looked about the room. What a contrast to the subtle elegance of the
setting she had pictured for herself--an apartment which should surpass
the complicated luxury of her friends' surroundings by the whole extent
of that artistic sensibility which made her feel herself their superior;
in which every tint and line should combine to enhance her beauty and
give distinction to her leisure! Once more the haunting sense of physical
ugliness was intensified by her mental depression, so that each piece of
the offending furniture seemed to thrust forth its most aggressive angle.

Her aunt's words had told her nothing new; but they had revived the
vision of Bertha Dorset, smiling, flattered, victorious, holding her up
to ridicule by insinuations intelligible to every member of their little
group. The thought of the ridicule struck deeper than any other
sensation: Lily knew every turn of the allusive jargon which could flay
its victims without the shedding of blood. Her cheek burned at the
recollection, and she rose and caught up the letters. She no longer meant
to destroy them: that intention had been effaced by the quick corrosion
of Mrs. Peniston's words.

Instead, she approached her desk, and lighting a taper, tied and sealed
the packet; then she opened the wardrobe, drew out a despatch-box, and
deposited the letters within it. As she did so, it struck her with a
flash of irony that she was indebted to Gus Trenor for the means of
buying them.

 Lily receives the first dividend -- one thousand dollars -- from the investment made on her behalf by Trenor. Trenor tells Lily that she has already earned five thousand dollars from a tip he received from Rosedale. Lily continues to humor Trenor, which she believes is enough to repay him for his efforts. Her new friendship of convenience with Trenor is encouraged by his wife, Judy, who believes Lily keeps Trenor in high spirits. Judy places Lily in a favorable light in comparison to Carry, whom she characterizes as a "vulture." Lily is willfully ignorant of the risks of the stock market. She also is ignorant of the derivation of the initial investment that Trenor has made for her when she assumes he has borrowed from her securities. She considers the money she earns through Trenor to be hers alone. Lily's cousin, Stepney, and Gwen marry in an elaborate ceremony. At the wedding, she sees both Gryce and Selden. She still perceives Gryce as a potential suitor. She also meets with Selden's cousin, Gerty, a young woman of simple means and undistinguished appearance. The two women admire the jewels that are gifts to the newlyweds, including a large diamond pendant, which is Rosedale's gift. Gerty tells Lily that she has heard Gryce will soon announce his engagement to Evie Van Osburgh, whom Lily considers to be the least attractive and interesting of the four Van Osburgh sisters. A mildly intoxicated Trenor approaches Lily with the news that he has sold her stock as it was rising, and has a check for four thousand dollars for her. Lily pays little attention to Trenor, and is scheming to steal Gryce away from Evie. Trenor complains that Lily has been avoiding his household since he has begun investing money for her. Lily regards spending time with Trenor a reckoning for his helping her, and agrees to attend to Rosedale as a partial return of Trenor's favor. Lily leaves Trenor and is confronted by Selden. She remarks that she envies Gerty's ability to romanticize what Selden must perceive as the garish and ostentatious wedding gifts. She continues: "I have never recovered my self-respect since you showed me how poor and unimportant my ambitions were." He responds that his purpose was to prove that "they were more important to you than anything else." The exchange is interrupted by Trenor and Rosedale. When she appears ready to snub him, Rosedale reminds her of the lie she told him in Chapter I by commenting on her dress and asking if she had it made at the fictional dressmaker shop in the Benedick. She allows Rosedale to accompany her for a lemonade, and the man struts like a peacock in the presence of the beautiful Lily. She employs Rosedale as an escort into the conservatory, where she intends to discover the truth about the engagement of Gryce and Evie. She encounters Evie's mother, Mrs. Van Osburgh, who confides that the couple is engaged. At the beginning of Chapter IX, Lily's aunt, Mrs. Peniston, returns home, and Lily weighs the advantages of staying with either her or the Trenors for the fall. She opts to stay with Mrs. Peniston to avoid the indebtedness to Trenor. Upon the opening of Mrs. Peniston's house, Lily once again encounters the cleaning woman she saw at the Benedick. This time, Lily is rude to the woman. The cleaning woman, Mrs. Haffen, later tells Lily that she and her husband have been dismissed from the Benedick, and that she has letters addressed to Selden that she is willing to sell to Lily. Lily realizes that Mrs. Haffen believes that the letters were written by Lily when, in fact, they were written by Bertha. Lily purchases the letters, intending to destroy them. Mrs. Peniston presses Lily for details of the Stepney-Van Osburgh wedding, telling Lily that she has heard that Bertha is taking credit for the match between Gryce and Evie. Lily retires to her room, where she places the letters from Bertha to Selden in a box for future use.

