Chapter 6
That evening, after Mr. Jackson had taken himself away, and the ladies had retired to their chintz- curtained bedroom, Newland Archer mounted thoughtfully to his own study. A vigilant hand had, as usual, kept the fire alive and the lamp trimmed; and the room, with its rows and rows of books, its bronze and steel statuettes of "The Fencers" on the mantelpiece and its many photographs of famous pictures, looked singularly home-like and welcoming.
As he dropped into his armchair near the fire his eyes rested on a large photograph of May Welland, which the young girl had given him in the first days of their romance, and which had now displaced all the other portraits on the table. With a new sense of awe he looked at the frank forehead, serious eyes and gay innocent mouth of the young creature whose soul's custodian he was to be. That terrifying product of the social system he belonged to and believed in, the young girl who knew nothing and expected everything, looked back at him like a stranger through May Welland's familiar features; and once more it was borne in on him that marriage was not the safe anchorage he had been taught to think, but a voyage on uncharted seas.
The case of the Countess Olenska had stirred up old settled convictions and set them drifting dangerously through his mind. His own exclamation: "Women should be free--as free as we are," struck to the root of a problem that it was agreed in his world to regard as non-existent. "Nice" women, however wronged, would never claim the kind of freedom he meant, and generous- minded men like himself were therefore--in the heat of argument--the more chivalrously ready to concede it to them. Such verbal generosities were in fact only a humbugging disguise of the inexorable conventions that tied things together and bound people down to the old pattern. But here he was pledged to defend, on the part of his betrothed's cousin, conduct that, on his own wife's part, would justify him in calling down on her all the thunders of Church and State. Of course the dilemma was purely hypothetical; since he wasn't a blackguard Polish nobleman, it was absurd to speculate what his wife's rights would be if he WERE. But Newland Archer was too imaginative not to feel that, in his case and May's, the tie might gall for reasons far less gross and palpable. What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a "decent" fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal? What if, for some one of the subtler reasons that would tell with both of them, they should tire of each other, misunderstand or irritate each other? He reviewed his friends' marriages-- the supposedly happy ones--and saw none that answered, even remotely, to the passionate and tender comradeship which he pictured as his permanent relation with May Welland. He perceived that such a picture presupposed, on her part, the experience, the versatility, the freedom of judgment, which she had been carefully trained not to possess; and with a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other. Lawrence Lefferts occurred to him as the husband who had most completely realised this enviable ideal. As became the high-priest of form, he had formed a wife so completely to his own convenience that, in the most conspicuous moments of his frequent love-affairs with other men's wives, she went about in smiling unconsciousness, saying that "Lawrence was so frightfully strict"; and had been known to blush indignantly, and avert her gaze, when some one alluded in her presence to the fact that Julius Beaufort (as became a "foreigner" of doubtful origin) had what was known in New York as "another establishment."
Archer tried to console himself with the thought that he was not quite such an ass as Larry Lefferts, nor May such a simpleton as poor Gertrude; but the difference was after all one of intelligence and not of standards. In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs; as when Mrs. Welland, who knew exactly why Archer had pressed her to announce her daughter's engagement at the Beaufort ball (and had indeed expected him to do no less), yet felt obliged to simulate reluctance, and the air of having had her hand forced, quite as, in the books on Primitive Man that people of advanced culture were beginning to read, the savage bride is dragged with shrieks from her parents' tent.
The result, of course, was that the young girl who was the centre of this elaborate system of mystification remained the more inscrutable for her very frankness and assurance. She was frank, poor darling, because she had nothing to conceal, assured because she knew of nothing to be on her guard against; and with no better preparation than this, she was to be plunged overnight into what people evasively called "the facts of life."
The young man was sincerely but placidly in love. He delighted in the radiant good looks of his betrothed, in her health, her horsemanship, her grace and quickness at games, and the shy interest in books and ideas that she was beginning to develop under his guidance. (She had advanced far enough to join him in ridiculing the Idyls of the King, but not to feel the beauty of Ulysses and the Lotus Eaters.) She was straightforward, loyal and brave; she had a sense of humour (chiefly proved by her laughing at HIS jokes); and he suspected, in the depths of her innocently-gazing soul, a glow of feeling that it would be a joy to waken. But when he had gone the brief round of her he returned discouraged by the thought that all this frankness and innocence were only an artificial product. Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent; it was full of the twists and defences of an instinctive guile. And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.
There was a certain triteness in these reflections: they were those habitual to young men on the approach of their wedding day. But they were generally accompanied by a sense of compunction and self-abasement of which Newland Archer felt no trace. He could not deplore (as Thackeray's heroes so often exasperated him by doing) that he had not a blank page to offer his bride in exchange for the unblemished one she was to give to him. He could not get away from the fact that if he had been brought up as she had they would have been no more fit to find their way about than the Babes in the Wood; nor could he, for all his anxious cogitations, see any honest reason (any, that is, unconnected with his own momentary pleasure, and the passion of masculine vanity) why his bride should not have been allowed the same freedom of experience as himself.
Such questions, at such an hour, were bound to drift through his mind; but he was conscious that their uncomfortable persistence and precision were due to the inopportune arrival of the Countess Olenska. Here he was, at the very moment of his betrothal--a moment for pure thoughts and cloudless hopes--pitchforked into a coil of scandal which raised all the special problems he would have preferred to let lie. "Hang Ellen Olenska!" he grumbled, as he covered his fire and began to undress. He could not really see why her fate should have the least bearing on his; yet he dimly felt that he had only just begun to measure the risks of the championship which his engagement had forced upon him.
A few days later the bolt fell.
The Lovell Mingotts had sent out cards for what was known as "a formal dinner" (that is, three extra footmen, two dishes for each course, and a Roman punch in the middle), and had headed their invitations with the words "To meet the Countess Olenska," in accordance with the hospitable American fashion, which treats strangers as if they were royalties, or at least as their ambassadors.
The guests had been selected with a boldness and discrimination in which the initiated recognised the firm hand of Catherine the Great. Associated with such immemorial standbys as the Selfridge Merrys, who were asked everywhere because they always had been, the Beauforts, on whom there was a claim of relationship, and Mr. Sillerton Jackson and his sister Sophy (who went wherever her brother told her to), were some of the most fashionable and yet most irreproachable of the dominant "young married" set; the Lawrence Leffertses, Mrs. Lefferts Rushworth (the lovely widow), the Harry Thorleys, the Reggie Chiverses and young Morris Dagonet and his wife (who was a van der Luyden). The company indeed was perfectly assorted, since all the members belonged to the little inner group of people who, during the long New York season, disported themselves together daily and nightly with apparently undiminished zest.
Forty-eight hours later the unbelievable had happened; every one had refused the Mingotts' invitation except the Beauforts and old Mr. Jackson and his sister. The intended slight was emphasised by the fact that even the Reggie Chiverses, who were of the Mingott clan, were among those inflicting it; and by the uniform wording of the notes, in all of which the writers "regretted that they were unable to accept," without the mitigating plea of a "previous engagement" that ordinary courtesy prescribed.
New York society was, in those days, far too small, and too scant in its resources, for every one in it (including livery-stable-keepers, butlers and cooks) not to know exactly on which evenings people were free; and it was thus possible for the recipients of Mrs. Lovell Mingott's invitations to make cruelly clear their determination not to meet the Countess Olenska.
The blow was unexpected; but the Mingotts, as their way was, met it gallantly. Mrs. Lovell Mingott confided the case to Mrs. Welland, who confided it to Newland Archer; who, aflame at the outrage, appealed passionately and authoritatively to his mother; who, after a painful period of inward resistance and outward temporising, succumbed to his instances (as she always did), and immediately embracing his cause with an energy redoubled by her previous hesitations, put on her grey velvet bonnet and said: "I'll go and see Louisa van der Luyden."
The New York of Newland Archer's day was a small and slippery pyramid, in which, as yet, hardly a fissure had been made or a foothold gained. At its base was a firm foundation of what Mrs. Archer called "plain people"; an honourable but obscure majority of respectable families who (as in the case of the Spicers or the Leffertses or the Jacksons) had been raised above their level by marriage with one of the ruling clans. People, Mrs. Archer always said, were not as particular as they used to be; and with old Catherine Spicer ruling one end of Fifth Avenue, and Julius Beaufort the other, you couldn't expect the old traditions to last much longer.
Firmly narrowing upward from this wealthy but inconspicuous substratum was the compact and dominant group which the Mingotts, Newlands, Chiverses and Mansons so actively represented. Most people imagined them to be the very apex of the pyramid; but they themselves (at least those of Mrs. Archer's generation) were aware that, in the eyes of the professional genealogist, only a still smaller number of families could lay claim to that eminence.
"Don't tell me," Mrs. Archer would say to her children, "all this modern newspaper rubbish about a New York aristocracy. If there is one, neither the Mingotts nor the Mansons belong to it; no, nor the Newlands or the Chiverses either. Our grandfathers and great- grandfathers were just respectable English or Dutch merchants, who came to the colonies to make their fortune, and stayed here because they did so well. One of your great-grandfathers signed the Declaration, and another was a general on Washington's staff, and received General Burgoyne's sword after the battle of Saratoga. These are things to be proud of, but they have nothing to do with rank or class. New York has always been a commercial community, and there are not more than three families in it who can claim an 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 their aristocratic Cornish kinsfolk, the Trevennas, had always remained close and cordial. Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden had more than once paid long visits to the present head of the house of Trevenna, the Duke of St. Austrey, at his country-seat in Cornwall and at St. Austrey in Gloucestershire; and his Grace had frequently announced his intention of some day returning their visit (without the Duchess, who feared the Atlantic).
Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden divided their time between Trevenna, their place in Maryland, and Skuytercliff, the great estate on the Hudson which had been one of the colonial grants of the Dutch government to the famous first Governor, and of which Mr. van der Luyden was still "Patroon." Their large solemn house in Madison Avenue was seldom opened, and when they came to town they received in it only their most intimate friends.
"I wish you would go with me, Newland," his mother said, suddenly pausing at the door of the Brown coupe. "Louisa is fond of you; and of course it's on account of dear May that I'm taking this step--and also because, if we don't all stand together, there'll be no such thing as Society left."
这天晚上，杰克逊先生离开之后，两位女士回到她们挂着印花布窗帘的卧室，纽兰•阿切尔沉思着上楼进了自己的书房。勤快的仆人已跟平时一样把炉火燃旺，调好了灯的光亮。屋子里放着一排排的书，壁炉炉台上放着一个个铜制与钢制的“击剑者”小雕像，墙上挂着许多名画的照片——这一切看起来格外温馨。
他坐进自己那把扶手椅时，目光落在梅•韦兰的一张大照片上，那是他们恋爱初期那位年轻姑娘送给他的，如今已经取代了桌子上所有其他的画像。他带着一种敬畏的新感觉注视着她那坦诚的前额、庄重的眼睛，以及天真快乐的嘴巴。他就要成为这位年轻女子的灵魂监护人了，作为他归属并信奉的这个社会制度的令人惊叹的产物，这位年轻姑娘对一切都全然不知，却又期待着得到一切。她像一个陌生人，借助梅•韦兰那熟悉的容貌回望着他；他又一次深刻地认识到：婚姻并非如他惯常认为的那样，是一个安全的港湾，而是在未知的大洋上的航行。
奥兰斯卡伯爵夫人的事搅乱了那些根深蒂固的社会信条，并使它们在他的脑海里危险地飘移。他个人的断言——“女人应当是自由的——跟我们一样自由”——击中了一个问题的要害，而这个问题在他那个圈子里却一致认为是不存在的。“有教养”的女子，无论受到怎样的伤害，都决不会要求他讲的那种自由，而像他这样心胸博大的男人却因此越发豪侠地——在激烈辩论中——准备把这种自由授与她们。这种口头上的慷慨陈词实际上只是骗人的幌子而已，在它背后止是束缚世事、让人因袭守旧的不可动摇的习俗。不过，他在这里发誓为之辩护的未婚妻的表姐的那些行为，若是出现在自己妻子身上，他即使请求教会和国家给她最严厉的惩罚也会是正当的。当然，这种两难的推测纯属假设；既然他不是个恶棍般的波兰贵族，现在假设他是，再来推断他妻子将有什么权力，这未免荒唐。然而纽兰•阿切尔想像力太强，难免不想到他与梅的关系也可能会由于远没有如此严重和明显的原因而受到损害。既然作为一个“正人君子”，向她隐瞒自己的过去是他的义务，而作为已到婚龄的姑娘，她的义务却是把过去的历史向他袒露，那么，两个人又怎能真正相互了解呢？假如因某种微妙的原因使他们两人互相厌倦、误解或发生不愉快，那该怎么办呢？他回顾朋友们的婚姻——那些被认为是美满的婚姻——发现没有一个（哪怕一点点）符合他为自己与梅•韦兰构想的那种终生相伴的热烈而又温柔的友爱关系。他意识到，作为这种构想的前提条件——她的经验、她的多才多艺、她的判断自由——她早已被精心训练得不具备了。他预感地打了个冷颤，发现自己的婚姻变得跟周围大部分人完全相同：一种由一方的愚昧与另一方的虚伪捏合在一起的物质利益与社会利益的乏味的联盟。他想到，劳伦斯•莱弗茨就是一个彻底实现了这一令人羡慕的理想的丈夫。那位仪态举止方面的权威，塑造了一位给他最大方便的妻子。在他与别人的妻子频繁发生桃色事件大出风头的时刻，她却照常喜笑颜开，不知不觉，四处游说：“劳伦斯极其循规蹈矩。”有人在她面前提及朱利叶斯•博福特拥有纽约人所说的“外室”时（籍贯来历不明的“外国人”常常如此），据说她气得脸都红了，并且把目光移开。
阿切尔设法安慰自己，心想他跟拉里•莱弗茨那样的蠢驴决不可同日而语，梅也不是可悲的格特鲁德那样的傻爪；然而这差别毕竟只是属于才智方面的，而不是原则性的。他们实际上都生活在一种用符号表示的天地里，在那里真实的事情从来不说、不做，甚至也不想，而只是用一套随心所欲的符号来表示；就像韦兰太太那样，她十分清楚阿切尔为什么催她在博福特的舞会上宣布女儿的订婚消息（而且她确实也希望他那样做），却认为必须假装不情愿，装出勉为其难的样子，这颇似文化超前的人们开始阅读的关于原始人的书中描绘的情景：原始时代未开化的新娘是尖叫着被人从父母的帐篷里拖走的。
其结果必然是，处于精心策划的神秘体制中心的年轻姑娘因为坦诚与自信反而越发不可思议。她坦诚——可怜的宝贝——因为她没有什么需要隐瞒；她自信，因为她不知道有什么需要防范；仅仅有这点准备，一夜之间她便投身于人们含糊称谓的“生活常规”之中去了。
阿切尔真诚却又冷静地坠人爱河，他喜爱未婚妻光华照人的容貌、她的身体、她的马术、她在游戏中的优雅与敏捷，以及在他指导下刚刚萌发的对书籍与思想的兴趣。（她已经进步到能与他一起嘲笑《国王牧歌》，但尚不能感受《尤利西斯》与《食忘忧果者》的美妙。）她直爽、忠诚、勇敢，并且有幽默感（主要证明是听了他的笑话后大笑）。他推测，在她天真、专注的心灵深处有一种热烈的感情，唤醒它是一种快乐。然而对她进行一番解剖之后，他重又变得气馁起来，因为他想到，所有这些坦率与天真只不过是人为的产物。未经驯化的人性是不坦率、不天真的，而是出自本能的狡猾，充满了怪僻与防范。他感到自己就受到这种人造的假纯洁的折磨。它非常巧妙地由母亲们、姑姨们、祖母们及早已过世的祖先们合谋制造出来——因为据认为他需要它并有权得到它——以便让他行使自己的高贵意志，把它像雪人般打得粉碎。
这些想法未免有些迂腐，它们属于临近婚礼的年轻人惯常的思考，不过伴随这些思考的往往是懊悔与自卑，但纽兰•阿切尔却丝毫没有这种感觉。他不想哀叹（这是萨克雷的主人公们经常令他恼怒的做法）他没有一身的清白奉献给他的新娘，以换取她的白壁无瑕。他不想回避这样的事实：假如他受的教养跟她一样，他们的适应能力就无异于那些容易上当的老好人。而且，绞尽脑汁也看不出有何（与他个人的一时寻欢与强烈的男性虚荣心不相干的）正当理由，不让他的新娘得到与他同样的自由与经验。
这样一些问题，在这样一种时刻，是必然会浮上他心头的；然而他意识到，它们那样清晰、那样令人不快地压在他的心头，全是因为奥兰斯卡伯爵夫人来得不合时宜，使他刚好在订婚的时刻——思想纯净、前景光明的时刻——突然被推人丑闻的混浊漩涡，引出了所有那些他宁愿束之高阁的特殊问题。“去他的埃伦•奥兰斯卡！”他抱怨地咕哝道，一面盖好炉火，开始脱衣。他真的不明白她的命运为何会对他产生影响，然而他朦胧地感觉到，他只是刚刚开始体验订婚加给他的捍卫者这一角色的风险。
几天之后，意外的事情发生了。
洛弗尔•明戈特家散发请柬，要举办所谓“正式宴会”（即增加3名男仆，每道菜两份，中间上罗马潘趣酒），并按好客的美国方式——把陌生人当成王亲贵族。或者至少是他们的大使对待——在请柬开头用了“为欢迎奥兰斯卡伯爵夫人”这样的措辞。
客人的挑选颇具胆识，内行人从中看得出大人物凯瑟琳的大手笔。被邀请的常客有塞尔弗里奇•梅里夫妇——他们到处受邀请是因为历来如此，博福特夫妇——人们要求与他们建立联系，以及西勒顿•杰克逊先生与妹妹索菲（哥哥让她去哪儿她就去哪儿）。与这些中坚人物为伍的是几对最时髦却又最无懈可击。超群出众的“年轻夫妇”；还有劳伦斯•莱弗茨夫妇，莱弗茨•拉什沃斯太太（那位可爱的寡妇），哈里•索利夫妇，雷杰•奇弗斯夫妇，以及小莫里斯•达格尼特和他妻子（她姓范德卢顿）。这伙客人真可谓最完美的组合，因为他们都属于那个核心小团体，在纽约漫长社交季节里，他们热情不减地日夜在一起寻欢作乐。
48小时之后，令人不可思议的事情发生了。除去博福特夫妇及老杰克逊先生和妹妹，所有的人都拒绝了明戈特家的邀请。甚至属于明戈特家族的雷杰•奇弗斯夫妇也加盟作梗。而且他们的回函措辞也十分统一，都是直截了当地说“抱歉不能接受邀请”，连一般情况下出于礼貌常用的“事先有约”这种缓冲性借口都没有。这一事实突出了人们的故意怠慢。
那时候的纽约社交界范围还很小，娱乐活动也少得可怜，远不至于使其中任何人（包括马车行的老板、男仆及厨师在内）无法确知人们哪些晚上空闲。正因为如此，接到洛弗尔•明戈特太太请柬的人们不愿与奥兰斯卡伯爵夫人会面的决心，才表达得那么明确，那么无情。
这一打击是出乎意料的；然而明戈特一家以他们惯有的方式勇敢地迎接了这一挑战。洛弗尔•明戈特太太把情况秘密告知了韦兰太太，韦兰太太又秘密告知了纽兰• 阿切尔，他听了大为光火，急忙像下达命令似地要求母亲立即采取行动。做母亲的虽然内心里极其不愿，外表上却又不能不对他尽力抚慰。经过一段痛苦的斗争之后，还是屈从了他的要求（像一向那样），她立即采纳他的主张，且由于先前的犹豫而干劲倍增，戴上她的灰丝绒帽说：“我去找路易莎•范德卢顿。”
在纽兰•阿切尔那个时代，纽约的上流社会还是个滑溜溜的小金字塔，人们很难在上面开凿裂缝，找到立足点。其底部的坚实基础，由阿切尔太太所说的“平民”构成，他们多数属于相当有身份的家庭，尽管体面，却没有名望，通过与某个占支配地位的家族联姻而崛起（就像斯派塞夫妇、莱弗茨夫妇与杰克逊夫妇那样）。阿切尔太太总是说，人们不像过去那样讲究了；有老凯瑟琳•斯派塞把持第五大街的一端，朱利叶斯•博福特把持另一端，你无法指望那些老规矩能维持多久。
从这个富有却不引人注目的底部坚固地向上收缩，便是由明戈特家族、纽兰家族、奇弗斯家族及曼森家族代表的那个举足轻重的紧密群体。在多数人的想象中，他们便是金字塔的顶端了，然而他们自己（至少阿切尔太太那一代人）却明白，在职业系谱学家的心目中，只有为数更少的几个家族才有资格享有那份显赫。
阿切尔太太经常对孩子们说，“不要相信现在报纸上关于纽约有个贵族阶层的胡说八道。假如有的话，属于它的既不是明戈特家族，也不是曼森家族，更不是纽兰或奇弗斯家族。我们的祖父和曾祖父仅仅是有名望的英国或荷兰商人，他们来到殖民地发家致富，因为干得特别出色而留在了这里。你们的一位曾祖签署过《独立宣言》，另一位是华盛顿参谋部的一名将军，他在萨拉托加之役后接受了伯戈因将军的投降。这些事情是应该引以为荣的，不过这与身份、阶级毫无关系。纽约向来都是个商业社会，按字面的真正含义，能称得上贵族出身的不超过3个家族。”
跟纽约所有的人一样，阿切尔太太与她的儿子、女儿知道拥有这一殊荣的人物是谁：华盛顿广场的达戈内特夫妇。他们出身于英国古老的郡中世家，与皮特和福克斯家族有姻亲关系；兰宁家族，他们与德格拉斯伯爵的后代近亲通婚；还有范德卢顿一家，他n］是曼哈顿首任荷兰总督的直系后代，独立战争前与法国及英国的几位贵族有姻亲关系。
兰宁家族目前只剩下两位年迈却很活跃的三宁小姐。她们喜欢怀旧，兴致勃勃地生活在族人的画像与切宾代尔式的家具中间；达戈内特是个了不起的家族，他们与巴尔的摩和费城最著名的人物联了姻；而范德卢顿家虽然地位比前两家都高，但家道已经败落，成了残留在地面上的一抹夕照，目前能给人留下深刻印象的只有两个人物，即亨利•范德卢顿先生与他的太太。
亨利•范德卢顿太太原名路易莎•达戈内特，其母本是杜拉克上校的孙女。杜拉克属于海峡岛的一个古老家族，曾在康沃利斯麾下征战，战后携新娘圣奥斯特利伯爵的五女儿安吉莉卡•特利文纳小姐定居马里兰。达戈内特家、马里兰的杜拉克家及其康沃尔郡的贵族亲戚特利文纳家之间的关系一直密切融洽。范德卢顿先生与太太不止一次地对特利文纳家的现任首脑、圣奥斯特利公爵进行长时间拜望，到过他在康沃尔郡的庄园及格罗斯特郡的圣奥斯特利，而且公爵大人经常宣布有朝一日将对他们进行回访的意向（不携公爵夫人，她害怕大西洋）。
范德卢顿先生与太太把他们的时间分别花在马里兰的特利文纳宅邸以及哈德逊河沿岸的大庄园斯库特克利夫。庄园原是荷兰政府对著名的首任总督的赏赐，范德卢顿先生如今仍为“庄主”。他们在麦迪逊大街那座庄严肃穆的宅邪很少开门。他们进城时只在里面接待至交。
“希望你跟我一起去，纽兰，”母亲在布朗马车的门前突然停步说。“路易莎喜欢你；当然，我是为了亲爱的梅才走这一步的——同时还因为，假如我们不都站在一起，上流社会也就不复存在了。”