r. Olenski's a
finished scoundrel; but life with him must have been a good deal gayer
than it is in Fifth Avenue. Not that the family would admit that: they
think Fifth Avenue is Heaven with the rue de la Paix thrown in. And
poor Ellen, of course, has no idea of going back to her husband. She
held out as firmly as ever against that. So she's to settle down in
Paris with that fool Medora.... Well, Paris is Paris; and you can keep
a carriage there on next to nothing. But she was as gay as a bird, and
I shall miss her." Two tears, the parched tears of the old, rolled down
her puffy cheeks and vanished in the abysses of her bosom.

"All I ask is," she concluded, "that they shouldn't bother me any more.
I must really be allowed to digest my gruel...." And she twinkled a
little wistfully at Archer.

It was that evening, on his return home, that May announced her
intention of giving a farewell dinner to her cousin. Madame Olenska's
name had not been pronounced between them since the night of her flight
to Washington; and Archer looked at his wife with surprise.

"A dinner--why?" he interrogated.

Her colour rose. "But you like Ellen--I thought you'd be pleased."

"It's awfully nice--your putting it in that way. But I really don't
see--"

"I mean to do it, Newland," she said, quietly rising and going to her
desk. "Here are the invitations all written. Mother helped me--she
agrees that we ought to." She paused, embarrassed and yet smiling, and
Archer suddenly saw before him the embodied image of the Family.

"Oh, all right," he said, staring with unseeing eyes at the list of
guests that she had put in his hand.

When he entered the drawing-room before dinner May was stooping over
the fire and trying to coax the logs to burn in their unaccustomed
setting of immaculate tiles.

The tall lamps were all lit, and Mr. van der Luyden's orchids had been
conspicuously disposed in various receptacles of modern porcelain and
knobby silver. Mrs. Newland Archer's drawing-room was generally
thought a great success. A gilt bamboo jardiniere, in which the
primulas and cinerarias were punctually renewed, blocked the access to
the bay window (where the old-fashioned would have preferred a bronze
reduction of the Venus of Milo); the sofas and arm-chairs of pale
brocade were cleverly grouped about little plush tables densely covered
with silver toys, porcelain animals and efflorescent photograph frames;
and tall rosy-shade