box, pulling his long fair moustache, and who remarked
with authority, as the soprano paused: "No one but
Patti ought to attempt the Sonnambula."



VIII.

It was generally agreed in New York that the Countess
Olenska had "lost her looks."

She had appeared there first, in Newland Archer's
boyhood, as a brilliantly pretty little girl of nine or ten,
of whom people said that she "ought to be painted."
Her parents had been continental wanderers, and after
a roaming babyhood she had lost them both, and been
taken in charge by her aunt, Medora Manson, also a
wanderer, who was herself returning to New York to
"settle down."

Poor Medora, repeatedly widowed, was always coming
home to settle down (each time in a less expensive
house), and bringing with her a new husband or an
adopted child; but after a few months she invariably
parted from her husband or quarrelled with her ward,
and, having got rid of her house at a loss, set out again
on her wanderings. As her mother had been a Rushworth,
and her last unhappy marriage had linked her
to one of the crazy Chiverses, New York looked indulgently
on her eccentricities; but when she returned with