glance at her son, who said: "Immensely, sir.
But I was sure you'd like Madame Olenska."

Mr. van der Luyden looked at him with extreme gentleness. "I never ask
to my house, my dear Newland," he said, "any one whom I do not like.
And so I have just told Sillerton Jackson." With a glance at the clock
he rose and added: "But Louisa will be waiting. We are dining early,
to take the Duke to the Opera."

After the portieres had solemnly closed behind their visitor a silence
fell upon the Archer family.

"Gracious--how romantic!" at last broke explosively from Janey. No one
knew exactly what inspired her elliptic comments, and her relations had
long since given up trying to interpret them.

Mrs. Archer shook her head with a sigh. "Provided it all turns out for
the best," she said, in the tone of one who knows how surely it will
not. "Newland, you must stay and see Sillerton Jackson when he comes
this evening: I really shan't know what to say to him."

"Poor mother! But he won't come--" her son laughed, stooping to kiss
away her frown.

XI.

Some two weeks later, Newland Archer, sitting in abstracted idleness in
his private compartment of the office of Letterblair, Lamson and Low,
attorneys at law, was summoned by the head of the firm.

Old Mr. Letterblair, the accredited legal adviser of three generations
of New York gentility, throned behind his mahogany desk in evident
perplexity. As he stroked his closeclipped white whiskers and ran his
hand through the rumpled grey locks above his jutting brows, his
disrespectful junior partner thought how much he looked like the Family
Physician annoyed with a patient whose symptoms refuse to be classified.

"My dear sir--" he always addressed Archer as "sir"--"I have sent for
you to go into a little matter; a matter which, for the moment, I
prefer not to mention either to Mr. Skipworth or Mr. Redwood." The
gentlemen he spoke of were the other senior partners of the firm; for,
as was always the case with legal associations of old standing in New
York, all the partners named on the office letter-head were long since
dead; and Mr. Letterblair, for example, was, professionally speaking,
his own grandson.

He leaned back in his chair with a furrowed brow. "For family
reasons--" he continued.

Archer looked up.

"The Mingott family," said Mr. Letterblair with an explanatory smile
and bow. "Mrs. Manson Mingott sent for me yesterday. Her
grand-daughter the Count