urned instinctively, waiting to hear
what the old man had to say; for old Mr. Jackson was as great an
authority on "family" as Lawrence Lefferts was on "form." He knew all
the ramifications of New York's cousinships; and could not only
elucidate such complicated questions as that of the connection between
the Mingotts (through the Thorleys) with the Dallases of South
Carolina, and that of the relationship of the elder branch of
Philadelphia Thorleys to the Albany Chiverses (on no account to be
confused with the Manson Chiverses of University Place), but could also
enumerate the leading characteristics of each family: as, for instance,
the fabulous stinginess of the younger lines of Leffertses (the Long
Island ones); or the fatal tendency of the Rushworths to make foolish
matches; or the insanity recurring in every second generation of the
Albany Chiverses, with whom their New York cousins had always refused
to intermarry--with the disastrous exception of poor Medora Manson,
who, as everybody knew ... but then her mother was a Rushworth.

In addition to this forest of family trees, Mr. Sillerton Jackson
carried between his narrow hollow temples, and under his soft thatch of
silver hair, a register of most of the scandals and mysteries that had
smouldered under the unruffled surface of New York society within the
last fifty years. So far indeed did his information extend, and so
acutely retentive was his memory, that he was supposed to be the only
man who could have told you who Julius Beaufort, the banker, really
was, and what had become of handsome Bob Spicer, old Mrs. Manson
Mingott's father, who had disappeared so mysteriously (with a large sum
of trust money) less than a year after his marriage, on the very day
that a beautiful Spanish dancer who had been delighting thronged
audiences in the old Opera-house on the Battery had taken ship for
Cuba. But these mysteries, and many others, were closely locked in Mr.
Jackson's breast; for not only did his keen sense of honour forbid his
repeating anything privately imparted, but he was fully aware that his
reputation for discretion increased his opportunities of finding out
what he wanted to know.

The club box, therefore, waited in visible suspense while Mr. Sillerton
Jackson handed back Lawrence Lefferts's opera-glass. For a moment he
silently scrutinised the attentive group out of his filmy blue eyes
overhung by old veined lids; then he gave his moustache a thoughtf