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Mr Jackson nodded carelessly Every one had heard the rumours in question, and he scorned to confirloomy silence fell upon the party No one really liked Beaufort, and it was not wholly unpleasant to think the worst of his private life; but the idea of his having brought financial dishonour on his wife's fa to be enjoyed even by his enemies Archer's New York tolerated hypocrisy in private relations; but in business matters it exacted a li time since any well-known banker had failed discreditably; but every one remembered the social extinction visited on the heads of the firm when the last event of the kind had happened It would be the same with the Beauforts, in spite of his power and her popularity; not all the leagued strength of the Dallas connection would save poor Regina if there were any truth in the reports of her husband's unlawful speculations

The talk took refuge in less o they touched on seemed to confirm Mrs Archer's sense of an accelerated trend

"Of course, Newland, I know you let dear May go to Mrs Struthers's Sunday evenings--" she began; and May interposed gaily: "Oh, you know, everybody goes to Mrs Struthers's now; and she was invited to Granny's last reception"

It was thus, Archer reflected, that New York nore theining that they had taken place in a preceding age There was always a traitor in the citadel; and after he (or generally she) had surrendered the keys, as the use of pretending that it was inable? Once people had tasted of Mrs Struthers's easy Sunday hospitality they were not likely to sit at hone was transhed "Such things have to be, I suppose, as long as AMUSEMENT is what people go out for; but I've never quite forgiven your cousin Mada the first person to countenance Mrs Struthers"

A sudden blush rose to young Mrs Archer's face; it surprised her husband as uests about the table "Oh, ELLEN--" shetone in which her parents ht have said: "Oh, THE BLENKERS--"

It was the note which the fa on the mention of the Countess Olenska's name, since she had surprised and inconvenienced the obdurate to her husband's advances; but on May's lips it gave food for thought, and Archer looked at her with the sense of strangeness that sometimes came over him when she was most in the tone of her environment