Chapter: 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 is now back living with her aunt, Mrs. Peniston, who is redecorating with zeal. When Lily returns from the wedding, she passes a charwoman cleaning the stairs who doesn't move to let her by. Lily firmly asks the woman to move, and realizes that it is the same charwoman from the Benedick, who gave her such a sullen look when she was leaving Selden's place . Mrs. Peniston considers the upcoming fall season. She would rather her other companion, Grace Stepney, help out with re-decorating, although generally she finds Lily to be a more interesting person. Cut to Lily, who, alone, hears the doorbell ring and is told that a "Mrs. Haffen" is waiting, whoever that is. Lily agrees to see her, and it turns out to be the same charwoman we've now met twice. She has something to show Lily, a package wrapped in dirty newspapers. This can't be good. It turns out to be a packet of letters. Mrs. Haffen starts talking about her own financial problems. And we all smell blackmail... The package turns out to be a collection of letters which Selden threw out, but failed to burn. He only ripped them up into big pieces, which the charwoman put back together. Lily feels physically ill from being a part of this "vileness." But she does happen to recognize the handwriting in the letters: Mrs. Dorset's. She also realizes that these letters from Mrs. Dorset to Selden are actually quite recent. Lily suddenly concludes that she has major, major power over Mrs. Dorset . But, the fact is, she's just too disgusted by the dinginess of the situation to want to take part in it. She tries to turn the charwoman away. But Mrs. Haffen presses her. She needs money for them; otherwise, Lily's reputation will be ruined. Now Lily understands: this charwoman thinks the letters came from her . Lily considers the fact that Selden, too - not just Mrs. Dorset - is on the line here. So she negotiates the price and purchases the letters. Mrs. Haffen leaves. Just about then, Mrs. Peniston shows up, wanting to hear all the juicy details about the wedding: who was wearing what, who gave what as gifts, what were the decorations like, etc. Lily doesn't feel like playing this game, considering everything that's just gone down. Mrs. Peniston, who apparently doesn't know about Lily's past with Gryce, talks excitedly of his engagement to Evie. She says that Mrs. Dorset played Cupid in the matchmaking... Lily excuses herself and heads up to bed. Now, she had planned on burning the letters - until Mrs. Peniston reminded her of Mrs. Dorset's vindictiveness. Lily tucks the letters away in her closet.... She also realizes that she is indebted to Gus Trenor for the money she used to buy them.

