Mingott was delighted with the engagement, which, being long foreseen by watchful relatives, had been carefully passed upon in family council; and the engagement ring, a large thick sapphire set in invisible claws, met with her unqualified admiration.
"It's the new setting: of course it shows the stone beautifully, but it looks a little bare to old-fashioned eyes," Mrs.Welland had explained, with a conciliatory side-glance at her future son-in-law.
"Old-fashioned eyes? I hope you don't mean mine, my dear? I like all the novelties," said the ancestress, lifting the stone to her small bright orbs, which no glasses had ever disfigured."Very handsome," she added, returning the jewel; "very liberal.In my time a cameo set in pearls was thought sufficient.But it's the hand that sets off the ring, isn't it, my dear Mr.Archer?"and she waved one of her tiny hands, with small pointed nails and rolls of aged fat encircling the wrist like ivory bracelets."Mine was modelled in Rome by the great Ferrigiani.You should have May's done: no doubt he'll have it done, my child.Her hand is large--it's these modern sports that spread the joints--but the skin is white.--And when's the wedding to be?" she broke off, fixing her eyes on Archer's face.
"Oh--" Mrs.Welland murmured, while the young man, smiling at his betrothed, replied: "As soon as ever it can, if only you'll back me up, Mrs.Mingott.""We must give them time to get to know each other a little better, mamma," Mrs.Welland interposed, with the proper affectation of reluctance; to which the ancestress rejoined: "Know each other? Fiddlesticks!
Everybody in New York has always known everybody.
Let the young man have his way, my dear; don't wait till the bubble's off the wine.Marry them before Lent;I may catch pneumonia any winter now, and I want to give the wedding-breakfast."These successive statements were received with the proper expressions of amusement, incredulity and gratitude;and the visit was breaking up in a vein of mild pleasantry when the door opened to admit the Countess Olenska, who entered in bonnet and mantle followed by the unexpected figure of Julius Beaufort.
There was a cousinly murmur of pleasure between the ladies, and Mrs.Mingott held out Ferrigiani's model to the banker."Ha! Beaufort, this is a rare favour!"(She had an odd foreign way of addressing men by their surnames.)"Thanks.I wish it might happen oftener," said the visitor in his easy arrogant way."I'm generally so tied down; but I met the Countess Ellen in Madison Square, and she was good enough to let me walk home with her.""Ah--I hope the house will be gayer, now that Ellen's here!" cried Mrs.Mingott with a glorious effrontery."Sit down--sit down, Beaufort: push up the yellow armchair; now I've got you I want a good gossip.Ihear your ball was magnificent; and I understand you invited Mrs.Lemuel Struthers? Well--I've a curiosity to see the woman myself."She had forgotten her relatives, who were drifting out into the hall under Ellen Olenska's guidance.Old Mrs.Mingott had always professed a great admiration for Julius Beaufort, and there was a kind of kinship in their cool domineering way and their short-cuts through the conventions.Now she was eagerly curious to know what had decided the Beauforts to invite (for the first time) Mrs.Lemuel Struthers, the widow of Struthers's Shoe-polish, who had returned the previous year from a long initiatory sojourn in Europe to lay siege to the tight little citadel of New York."Of course if you and Regina invite her the thing is settled.Well, we need new blood and new money--and I hear she's still very good-looking," the carnivorous old lady declared.
In the hall, while Mrs.Welland and May drew on their furs, Archer saw that the Countess Olenska was looking at him with a faintly questioning smile.
"Of course you know already--about May and me,"he said, answering her look with a shy laugh."She scolded me for not giving you the news last night at the Opera: I had her orders to tell you that we were engaged--but I couldn't, in that crowd."The smile passed from Countess Olenska's eyes to her lips: she looked younger, more like the bold brown Ellen Mingott of his boyhood."Of course I know; yes.
And I'm so glad.But one doesn't tell such things first in a crowd." The ladies were on the threshold and she held out her hand.
"Good-bye; come and see me some day," she said, still looking at Archer.
In the carriage, on the way down Fifth Avenue, they talked pointedly of Mrs.Mingott, of her age, her spirit, and all her wonderful attributes.No one alluded to Ellen Olenska; but Archer knew that Mrs.Welland was thinking: "It's a mistake for Ellen to be seen, the very day after her arrival, parading up Fifth Avenue at the crowded hour with Julius Beaufort--" and the young man himself mentally added: "And she ought to know that a man who's just engaged doesn't spend his time calling on married women.But I daresay in the set she's lived in they do--they never do anything else."And, in spite of the cosmopolitan views on which he prided himself, he thanked heaven that he was a New Yorker, and about to ally himself with one of his own kind.
