Book I
3. Chapter III.
(continued)
But folly is as often justified of her children as
wisdom, and two years after young Mrs. Beaufort's marriage
it was admitted that she had the most distinguished
house in New York. No one knew exactly how the
miracle was accomplished. She was indolent, passive,
the caustic even called her dull; but dressed like an
idol, hung with pearls, growing younger and blonder
and more beautiful each year, she throned in Mr. Beaufort's
heavy brown-stone palace, and drew all the world
there without lifting her jewelled little finger. The knowing
people said it was Beaufort himself who trained the
servants, taught the chef new dishes, told the gardeners
what hot-house flowers to grow for the dinner-table
and the drawing-rooms, selected the guests, brewed the
after-dinner punch and dictated the little notes his wife
wrote to her friends. If he did, these domestic activities
were privately performed, and he presented to the world
the appearance of a careless and hospitable millionaire
strolling into his own drawing-room with the detachment
of an invited guest, and saying: "My wife's gloxinias
are a marvel, aren't they? I believe she gets them
out from Kew."
Mr. Beaufort's secret, people were agreed, was the
way he carried things off. It was all very well to whisper
that he had been "helped" to leave England by the
international banking-house in which he had been
employed; he carried off that rumour as easily as the
rest--though New York's business conscience was no
less sensitive than its moral standard--he carried
everything before him, and all New York into his drawing-rooms, and for over twenty years now people had said
they were "going to the Beauforts'" with the same
tone of security as if they had said they were going to
Mrs. Manson Mingott's, and with the added satisfaction
of knowing they would get hot canvas-back ducks
and vintage wines, instead of tepid Veuve Clicquot
without a year and warmed-up croquettes from Philadelphia.
Mrs. Beaufort, then, had as usual appeared in her
box just before the Jewel Song; and when, again as
usual, she rose at the end of the third act, drew her
opera cloak about her lovely shoulders, and disappeared,
New York knew that meant that half an hour
later the ball would begin.
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