Alstyne cousin who was passing through town. The house, in its state of
unnatural immaculateness and order, was as dreary as a tomb, and as Lily,
turning from her brief repast between shrouded sideboards, wandered into
the newly-uncovered glare of the drawing-room she felt as though she were
buried alive in the stifling limits of Mrs. Peniston's existence.

She usually contrived to avoid being at home during the season of
domestic renewal. On the present occasion, however, a variety of reasons
had combined to bring her to town; and foremost among them was the fact
that she had fewer invitations than usual for the autumn. She had so long
been accustomed to pass from one country-house to another, till the close
of the holidays brought her friends to town, that the unfilled gaps of
time confronting her produced a sharp sense of waning popularity. It was
as she had said to Selden--people were tired of her. They would welcome
her in a new character, but as Miss Bart they knew her by heart. She
knew herself by heart too, and was sick of the old story. There were
moments when she longed blindly for anything different, anything strange,
remote and untried; but the utmost reach of her imagination did not go
beyond picturing her usual life in a new setting. She could not figure
herself as anywhere but in a drawing-room, diffusing elegance as a flower
sheds perfume.

Meanwhile, as October advanced she had to face the alternative of
returning to the Trenors or joining her aunt in town. Even the desolating
dulness of New York in October, and the soapy discomforts of Mrs.
Peniston's interior, seemed preferable to what might await her at
Bellomont; and with an air of heroic devotion she announced her intention
of remaining with her aunt till the holidays.

Sacrifices of this nature are sometimes received with feelings as mixed
as those which actuate them; and Mrs. Peniston remarked to her
confidential maid that, if any of the family were to be with her at such
a crisis (though for forty years she had been thought competent to see to
the hanging of her own curtains), she would certainly have preferred Miss
Grace to Miss Lily. Grace Stepney was an obscure cousin, of adaptable
manners and vicarious interests, who "ran in" to sit with Mrs. Peniston
when Lily dined out too continuously; who played bezique, picked up
dropped stitches, read out the deaths from the Times, and sincerely
admired the purple satin drawing-room curtains, the