When the men joined the ladies after dinner the Duke went straight up to the Countess Olenska, and they sat down in a corner and plunged into animated talk. Neither seemed aware that the Duke should first have paid his respects to Mrs. Lovell Mingott and Mrs. Headly Chivers, and the Countess have conversed with that amiable hypochondriac, Mr. Urban Dagonet of Washington Square, who, in order to have the pleasure of meeting her, had broken through his fixed rule of not dining out between January and April. The two chatted together for nearly twenty minutes; then the Countess rose and, walking alone across the wide drawing-room, sat down at Newland Archer’s side.
It was not the custom in New York drawing-rooms for a lady to get up and walk away from one gentleman in order to seek the company of another. Etiquette required that she should wait, immovable as an idol, while the men who wished to converse with her succeeded each other at her side. But the Countess was apparently unaware of having broken any rule; she sat at perfect ease in a corner of the sofa beside Archer, and looked at him with the kindest eyes.
“I want you to talk to me about May,” she said.
Instead of answering her he asked: “You knew the Duke before?”
“Oh, yes–we used to see him every winter at Nice. He’s very fond of gambling–he used to come to the house a great deal.” She said it in the simplest manner, as if she had said: “He’s fond of wild-flowers”; and after a moment she added candidly: “I think he’s the dullest man I ever met.”
This pleased her companion so much that he forgot the slight shock her previous remark had caused him. It was undeniably exciting to meet a lady who found the van der Luydens’ Duke dull, and dared to utter the opinion. He longed to question her, to hear more about the life of which her careless words had given him so illuminating a glimpse; but he feared to touch on distressing memories, and before he could think of anything to say she had strayed back to her original subject.
“May is a darling; I’ve seen no young girl in New York so handsome and so intelligent. Are you very much in love with her?”
Newland Archer reddened and laughed. “As much as a man can be.”
She continued to consider him thoughtfully, as if not to miss any shade of meaning in what he said, “Do you think, then, there is a limit?”
“To being in love? If there is, I haven’t found it!”
She glowed with sympathy. “Ah–it’s really and truly a romance?”
“The most romantic of romances!”
“How delightful! And you found it all out for yourselves–it was not in the least arranged for you?”
Archer looked at her incredulously. “Have you forgotten,” he asked with a smile, “that in our country we don’t allow our marriages to be arranged for us?”
A dusky blush rose to her cheek, and he instantly regretted his words.
“Yes,” she answered, “I’d forgotten. You must forgive me if I sometimes make these mistakes. I don’t always remember that everything here is good that was–that was bad where I’ve come from.” She looked down at her Viennese fan of eagle feathers, and he saw that her lips trembled.
“I’m so sorry,” he said impulsively; “but you ARE among friends here, you know.”
“Yes–I know. Wherever I go I have that feeling. That’s why I came home. I want to forget everything else, to become a complete American again, like the Mingotts and Wellands, and you and your delightful mother, and all the other good people here tonight. Ah, here’s May arriving, and you will want to hurry away to her,” she added, but without moving; and her eyes turned back from the door to rest on the young man’s face.
The drawing-rooms were beginning to fill up with after-dinner guests, and following Madame Olenska’s glance Archer saw May Welland entering with her mother. In her dress of white and silver, with a wreath of silver blossoms in her hair, the tall girl looked like a Diana just alight from the chase.