her, after they had lost their money, used to
say to her with a kind of fierce vindictiveness: "But you'll get it all
back--you'll get it all back, with your face." . . . The remembrance
roused a whole train of association, and she lay in the darkness
reconstructing the past out of which her present had grown.

A house in which no one ever dined at home unless there was "company"; a
door-bell perpetually ringing; a hall-table showered with square
envelopes which were opened in haste, and oblong envelopes which were
allowed to gather dust in the depths of a bronze jar; a series of French
and English maids giving warning amid a chaos of hurriedly-ransacked
wardrobes and dress-closets; an equally changing dynasty of nurses and
footmen; quarrels in the pantry, the kitchen and the drawing-room;
precipitate trips to Europe, and returns with gorged trunks and days of
interminable unpacking; semi-annual discussions as to where the summer
should be spent, grey interludes of economy and brilliant reactions of
expense--such was the setting of Lily Bart's first memories.

Ruling the turbulent element called home was the vigorous and determined
figure of a mother still young enough to dance her ball-dresses to rags,
while the hazy outline of a neutral-tinted father filled an intermediate
space between the butler and the man who came to wind the clocks. Even to
the eyes of infancy, Mrs. Hudson Bart had appeared young; but Lily could
not recall the time when her father had not been bald and slightly
stooping, with streaks of grey in his hair, and a tired walk. It was a
shock to her to learn afterward that he was but two years older than her
mother.

Lily seldom saw her father by daylight. All day he was "down town"; and
in winter it was long after nightfall when she heard his fagged step on
the stairs and his hand on the school-room door. He would kiss her in
silence, and ask one or two questions of the nurse or the governess; then
Mrs. Bart's maid would come to remind him that he was dining out, and he
would hurry away with a nod to Lily. In summer, when he joined them for a
Sunday at Newport or Southampton, he was even more effaced and silent
than in winter. It seemed to tire him to rest, and he would sit for hours
staring at the sea-line from a quiet corner of the verandah, while the
clatter of his wife's existence went on unheeded a few feet off.
Generally, however, Mrs. Bart and Lily went to Europe for the summer, and
before th