The Marriages

by Henry James




CHAPTER I



"Won't you stay a little longer?" the hostess asked while she held
the girl's hand and smiled. "It's too early for every one to go--
it's too absurd." Mrs. Churchley inclined her head to one side and
looked gracious; she flourished about her face, in a vaguely
protecting sheltering way, an enormous fan of red feathers.
Everything in her composition, for Adela Chart, was enormous. She
had big eyes, big teeth, big shoulders, big hands, big rings and
bracelets, big jewels of every sort and many of them. The train of
her crimson dress was longer than any other; her house was huge; her
drawing-room, especially now that the company had left it, looked
vast, and it offered to the girl's eyes a collection of the largest
sofas and chairs, pictures, mirrors, clocks, that she had ever
beheld. Was Mrs. Churchley's fortune also large, to account for so
many immensities? Of this Adela could know nothing, but it struck
her, while she smiled sweetly back at their entertainer, that she had
better try to find out. Mrs. Churchley had at least a high-hung
carriage drawn by the tallest horses, and in the Row she was to be
seen perched on a mighty hunter. She was high and extensive herself,
though not exactly fat; her bones were big, her limbs were long, and