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He stood silent, beating his stick nervously against his boot-top; and feeling that she had indeed found the right way of closing the discussion, she went on light-heartedly: "Oh, did I tell you that I showed Ellenshe ever saw There's nothing like it in the rue de la Paix, she said I do love you, Newland, for being so artistic!"

The next afternoon, as Archer, before dinner, sat s sullenly in his study, Janey wandered in on him He had failed to stop at his club on the way up from the office where he exercised the profession of the law in the leisurely manner common to well-to-do New Yorkers of his class He was out of spirits and slightly out of te every day at the saed his brain

"Sah his head like a persecuting tune as he saw the falass; and because he usually dropped in at the club at that hour he had gone home instead He knew not only what they were likely to be talking about, but the part each one would take in the discussion The Duke of course would be their principal theolden-haired lady in a shaenerally thought responsible) would also doubtless be thoroughly gone into Such "wo their own carriages still fewer, and the appearance of Miss Fanny Ring in Fifth Avenue at the fashionable hour had profoundly agitated society Only the day before, her carriage had passed Mrs Lovell Mingott's, and the latter had instantly rung the little bell at her elbow and ordered the coachman to drive her home "What if it had happened to Mrs van der Luyden?" people asked each other with a shudder Archer could hear Lawrence Lefferts, at that very hour, holding forth on the disintegration of society

He raised his head irritably when his sister Janey entered, and then quickly bent over his book (Swinburne's "Chastelard"--just out) as if he had not seen her She glanced at the writing-table heaped with books, opened a volume of the "Contes Drolatiques," hed: "What learned things you read!"

"Well--?" he asked, as she hovered Cassandra-like before hiry? With whom? About what?"

"Miss Sophy Jackson has just been here She brought word that her brother would come in after dinner: she couldn't say very ive all the details himself He's with cousin Louisa van der Luyden now"