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The Countess Olenska had said "after five"; and at half after the hour Newland Archer rang the bell of the peeling stucco house with a giant wisteria throttling its feeble cast-iron balcony, which she had hired, far down West Twenty-third Street, froe quarter to have settled in Small dress-makers, bird-stuffers and "people rote" were her nearest neighbours; and further down the dishevelled street Archer recognised a dilapidated wooden house, at the end of a paved path, in which a writer and journalist called Winsett, whom he used to come across now and then, had mentioned that he lived Winsett did not invite people to his house; but he had once pointed it out to Archer in the course of a nocturnal stroll, and the latter had asked himself, with a little shiver, if the humanities were so meanly housed in other capitals

Mada was redeemed from the same appearance only by a little more paint about the -frames; and as Archer mustered its modest front he said to himself that the Polish Count must have robbed her of her fortune as well as of her illusions

The young man had spent an unsatisfactory day He had lunched with the Wellands, hoping afterward to carry off May for a walk in the Park He wanted to have her to hiht before, and how proud he was of her, and to press her to hasten their e But Mrs Welland had firmly reminded him that the round of family visits was not half over, and, when he hinted at advancing the date of the wedding, had raised reproachful eye-brows and sighed out: "Twelve dozen of everything--hand-embroidered--"

Packed in the family landau they rolled from one tribal doorstep to another, and Archer, when the afternoon's round was over, parted fro that he had been shown off like a wild anis in anthropology caused him to take such a coarse vieas after all a si; but when he re to take place till the following autumn, and pictured what his life would be till then, a dampness fell upon his spirit

"Tomorrow," Mrs Welland called after him, "we'll do the Chiverses and the Dallases"; and he perceived that she was going through their two families alphabetically, and that they were only in the first quarter of the alphabet

He had meant to tell May of the Countess Olenska's request--her command, rather--that he should call on her that afternoon; but in the brief s to say Besides, it struck him as a little absurd to allude to the matter He knew that May most particularly wanted him to be kind to her cousin; was it not that hich had hastened the announceave him an odd sensation to reflect that, but for the Countess's arrival, he ht have been, if not still a free ed But May had willed it so, and he felt himself somehow relieved of further responsibility--and therefore at liberty, if he chose, to call on her cousin without telling her