lk took refuge in less ominous topics; but everything they
touched on seemed to confirm Mrs. Archer's sense of an accelerated
trend.

"Of course, Newland, I know you let dear May go to Mrs. Struthers's
Sunday evenings--" she began; and May interposed gaily: "Oh, you know,
everybody goes to Mrs. Struthers's now; and she was invited to Granny's
last reception."

It was thus, Archer reflected, that New York managed its transitions:
conspiring to ignore them till they were well over, and then, in all
good faith, imagining that they had taken place in a preceding age.
There was always a traitor in the citadel; and after he (or generally
she) had surrendered the keys, what was the use of pretending that it
was impregnable? Once people had tasted of Mrs. Struthers's easy
Sunday hospitality they were not likely to sit at home remembering that
her champagne was transmuted Shoe-Polish.

"I know, dear, I know," Mrs. Archer sighed. "Such things have to be, I
suppose, as long as AMUSEMENT is what people go out for; but I've never
quite forgiven your cousin Madame Olenska for being the first person to
countenance Mrs. Struthers."

A sudden blush rose to young Mrs. Archer's face; it surprised her
husband as much as the other guests about the table. "Oh, ELLEN--" she
murmured, much in the same accusing and yet deprecating tone in which
her parents might have said: "Oh, THE BLENKERS--."

It was the note which the family had taken to sounding on the mention
of the Countess Olenska's name, since she had surprised and
inconvenienced them by remaining obdurate to her husband's advances;
but on May's lips it gave food for thought, and Archer looked at her
with the sense of strangeness that sometimes came over him when she was
most in the tone of her environment.

His mother, with less than her usual sensitiveness to atmosphere, still
insisted: "I've always thought that people like the Countess Olenska,
who have lived in aristocratic societies, ought to help us to keep up
our social distinctions, instead of ignoring them."

May's blush remained permanently vivid: it seemed to have a
significance beyond that implied by the recognition of Madame Olenska's
social bad faith.

"I've no doubt we all seem alike to foreigners," said Miss Jackson
tartly.

"I don't think Ellen cares for society; but nobody knows exactly what
she does care for," May continued, as if she had been groping for
something noncommittal.

"Ah, well--" Mrs.