“I mean to do it, Newland,” she said, quietly rising and going to her desk. “Here are the invitations all written. Mother helped me—she agrees that we ought to.” She paused, embarrassed and yet smiling, and Archer suddenly saw before him the embodied image of the Family.
“Oh, all right,” he said, staring with unseeing eyes at the list of guests that she had put in his hand.
When he entered the drawing-room before dinner May was stooping over the fire and trying to coax the logs to burn in their unaccustomed setting of immaculate tiles.
The tall lamps were all lit, and Mr. van der Luyden’s orchids had been conspicuously disposed in various receptacles of modern porcelain and knobby silver. Mrs. Newland Archer’s drawing-room was generally thought a great success. A gilt bamboo jardinière, in which the primulas and cinerarias were punctually renewed, blocked the access to the bay window (where the old-fashioned would have preferred a bronze reduction of the Venus of Milo ); the sofas and armchairs of pale brocade were cleverly grouped about little plush tables densely covered with silver toys, porcelain animals and efflorescent photograph frames; and tall rosy-shaded lamps shot up like tropical flowers among the palms.
“I don’t think Ellen has ever seen this room lighted up,” said May, rising flushed from her struggle, and sending about her a glance of pardonable pride. The brass tongs which she had propped against the side of the chimney fell with a crash that drowned her husband’s answer; and before he could restore them Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden were announced.
The other guests quickly followed, for it was known that the van der Luydens liked to dine punctually. The room was nearly full, and Archer was engaged in showing to Mrs. Selfridge Merry a small highly-varnished Verbeckhoven Study of Sheep , which Mr. Welland had given May for Christmas, when he found Madame Olenska at his side.