hanging in dark frames on the dark walls.

"Ah, how your grandfather Archer loved a good
dinner, my dear Newland!" he said, his eyes on the
portrait of a plump full-chested young man in a stock
and a blue coat, with a view of a white-columned
country-house behind him. "Well--well--well . . . I
wonder what he would have said to all these foreign
marriages!"

Mrs. Archer ignored the allusion to the ancestral
cuisine and Mr. Jackson continued with deliberation:
"No, she was NOT at the ball."

"Ah--" Mrs. Archer murmured, in a tone that
implied: "She had that decency."

"Perhaps the Beauforts don't know her," Janey
suggested, with her artless malice.

Mr. Jackson gave a faint sip, as if he had been
tasting invisible Madeira. "Mrs. Beaufort may not--but
Beaufort certainly does, for she was seen walking up
Fifth Avenue this afternoon with him by the whole of
New York."

"Mercy--" moaned Mrs. Archer, evidently perceiving
the uselessness of trying to ascribe the actions of
foreigners to a sense of delicacy.