aristocratic origin in the real sense of the word."

Mrs. Archer and her son and daughter, like every
one else in New York, knew who these privileged beings
were: the Dagonets of Washington Square, who came
of an old English county family allied with the Pitts
and Foxes; the Lannings, who had intermarried with
the descendants of Count de Grasse, and the van der
Luydens, direct descendants of the first Dutch governor
of Manhattan, and related by pre-revolutionary
marriages to several members of the French and British
aristocracy.

The Lannings survived only in the person of two
very old but lively Miss Lannings, who lived cheerfully
and reminiscently among family portraits and Chippendale;
the Dagonets were a considerable clan, allied to
the best names in Baltimore and Philadelphia; but the
van der Luydens, who stood above all of them, had
faded into a kind of super-terrestrial twilight, from
which only two figures impressively emerged; those of
Mr. and Mrs. Henry van der Luyden.

Mrs. Henry van der Luyden had been Louisa Dagonet,
and her mother had been the granddaughter of Colonel
du Lac, of an old Channel Island family, who had
fought under Cornwallis and had settled in Maryland,
after the war, with his bride, Lady Angelica Trevenna,
fifth daughter of the Earl of St. Austrey. The tie
between the Dagonets, the du Lacs of Maryland, and