bliquely from
the right wing.

"The darling!" thought Newland Archer, his glance flitting back to the
young girl with the lilies-of-the-valley. "She doesn't even guess what
it's all about." And he contemplated her absorbed young face with a
thrill of possessorship in which pride in his own masculine initiation
was mingled with a tender reverence for her abysmal purity. "We'll
read Faust together ... by the Italian lakes ..." he thought, somewhat
hazily confusing the scene of his projected honey-moon with the
masterpieces of literature which it would be his manly privilege to
reveal to his bride. It was only that afternoon that May Welland had
let him guess that she "cared" (New York's consecrated phrase of maiden
avowal), and already his imagination, leaping ahead of the engagement
ring, the betrothal kiss and the march from Lohengrin, pictured her at
his side in some scene of old European witchery.

He did not in the least wish the future Mrs. Newland Archer to be a
simpleton. He meant her (thanks to his enlightening companionship) to
develop a social tact and readiness of wit enabling her to hold her own
with the most popular married women of the "younger set," in which it
was the recognised custom to attract masculine homage while playfully
discouraging it. If he had probed to the bottom of his vanity (as he
sometimes nearly did) he would have found there the wish that his wife
should be as worldly-wise and as eager to please as the married lady
whose charms had held his fancy through two mildly agitated years;
without, of course, any hint of the frailty which had so nearly marred
that unhappy being's life, and had disarranged his own plans for a
whole winter.

How this miracle of fire and ice was to be created, and to sustain
itself in a harsh world, he had never taken the time to think out; but
he was content to hold his view without analysing it, since he knew it
was that of all the carefully-brushed, white-waistcoated,
button-hole-flowered gentlemen who succeeded each other in the club
box, exchanged friendly greetings with him, and turned their
opera-glasses critically on the circle of ladies who were the product
of the system. In matters intellectual and artistic Newland Archer
felt himself distinctly the superior of these chosen specimens of old
New York gentility; he had probably read more, thought more, and even
seen a good deal more of the world, than any other man of the number.
Singly they betra