The House of Mirth

Chapter 1

Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central
Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart.

It was a Monday in early September, and he was returning to his work from
a hurried dip into the country; but what was Miss Bart doing in town at
that season? If she had appeared to be catching a train, he might have
inferred that he had come on her in the act of transition between one and
another of the country-houses which disputed her presence after the close
of the Newport season; but her desultory air perplexed him. She stood
apart from the crowd, letting it drift by her to the platform or the
street, and wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised,
be the mask of a very definite purpose. It struck him at once that she
was waiting for some one, but he hardly knew why the idea arrested him.
There was nothing new about Lily Bart, yet he could never see her without
a faint movement of interest: it was characteristic of her that she
always roused speculation, that her simplest acts seemed the result of
far-reaching intentions.

An impulse of curiosity made him turn out of his direct line to the door,
and stroll past her. He knew that if she did not wish to be seen she
would contrive to elude him; and it amused him to think of putting her
skill to the test.

"Mr. Selden--what good luck!"

She came forward smiling, eager almost, in her resolve to intercept him.
One or two persons, in brushing past them, lingered to look; for Miss
Bart was a figure to arrest even the suburban traveller rushing to his
last train.

Selden had never seen her more radiant. Her vivid head, relieved against
the dull tints of the crowd, made her more conspicuous than in a
ball-room, and under her dark hat and veil she regained the girlish
smoothness, the purity of tint, that she was beginning to lose after
eleven years of late hours and indefatigable dancing. Was it really
eleven years, Selden found himself wondering, and had she indeed reached
the nine-and-twentieth birthday with which her rivals credited her?

"What luck!" she repeated. "How nice of you to come to my rescue!"

He responded joyfully that to do so was his mission in life, and asked
what form the rescue was to take.

"Oh, almost any--even to sitting on a bench and talking to me. One sits
out a cotillion--why not sit out a train? It isn't a bit hotter here than
in Mrs. Van Osburgh's conservatory--and some of the women are not a bit
uglier." She broke off, laughing, to explain that she had come up to
town from Tuxedo, on her way to the Gus Trenors' at Bellomont, and had
missed the three-fifteen train to Rhinebeck. "And there isn't another
till half-past five." She consulted the little jewelled watch among her
laces. "Just two hours to wait. And I don't know what to do with myself.
My maid came up this morning to do some shopping for me, and was to go on
to Bellomont at one o'clock, and my aunt's house is closed, and I don't
know a soul in town." She glanced plaintively about the station. "It IS
hotter than Mrs. Van Osburgh's, after all. If you can spare the time, do
take me somewhere for a breath of air."

He declared himself entirely at her disposal: the adventure struck him as
diverting. As a spectator, he had always enjoyed Lily Bart; and his
course lay so far out of her orbit that it amused him to be drawn for a
moment into the sudden intimacy which her proposal implied.

"Shall we go over to Sherry's for a cup of tea?"

She smiled assentingly, and then made a slight grimace.

"So many people come up to town on a Monday--one is sure to meet a lot of
bores. I'm as old as the hills, of course, and it ought not to make any
difference; but if I'M old enough, you're not," she objected gaily. "I'm
dying for tea--but isn't there a quieter place?"

He answered her smile, which rested on him vividly. Her discretions
interested him almost as much as her imprudences: he was so sure that
both were part of the same carefully-elaborated plan. In judging Miss
Bart, he had always made use of the "argument from design."