y in possessions,
social dignity, and public consequence" ... "The first man in New
Amsterdam who had a family carriage" ... "The chief people of the
city and province, and stately visitors from the Old World, were often
grouped together under this roof"....

Such august and ample phrases could but nourish and exalt her sense
of worthiness; could but add to her growing sense of satisfaction.
She closed the ceremonious volume, and her eyes, lifting, rested for
a gratifying moment on a framed steel engraving from the painting of
Abraham De Peyster, Mayor of New York from 1691 to 1693. The picture
pleased her, with its aristocratically hooked nose, its full wig, its
smile of amiable condescension. But fortunately she had forgotten, or
perhaps preferred not to learn, that when this ancestor was New York's
foremost figure, the city had had within its domain somewhat less than
one one-thousandth of its present subjects.

And then her eyes wandered to the three-quarters portrait of herself
by M. Dubois, hung temporarily in this room. Yes, it was good. M.
Dubois had caught the peculiar De Peyster quality. One looked at it
and instinctively thought of generations processioning back into a
beginningless past. "In 1148 Archambaud de Paster" ...

Toward five o'clock she rose and, a stately figure in lavender
dressing-gown, strolled through the velvet hush of the great darkened
house: over foot-flattering rugs, through silken hangings that rustled
discreet homage at her passing, by dark tapestries lit with threads of
gold, among shadowy bronzes and family portraits and pier-glasses and
glinting cut-glass candlesticks and chandeliers. So exaltative yet so
soothing, this opulent silence, this spacious solitude!

And for an almost perfect hour she sat in her rear drawing-room,
lightly, ever so cautiously, touching bits of Grieg and Tschaikowsky
out of her Steinway Grand--just dim whispers of music that did not
breathe beyond the door. She played well, for she loved the piano and
had a real gift for instrumentation. Often when she played for her
friends, she had to hold herself in consciously, had to play below her
ability; for to have allowed herself to play her best might have been
to suggest that she was striving to be as good as a professional, and
that would have caused comment and been in bad taste.

Her piano was going to be another comfort to her.

She was complacent--even happy--even exultant. It was all so restful.
And