Book I
3. Chapter III.
(continued)
The Beaufort house was one that New Yorkers were
proud to show to foreigners, especially on the night of
the annual ball. The Beauforts had been among the
first people in New York to own their own red velvet
carpet and have it rolled down the steps by their own
footmen, under their own awning, instead of hiring it
with the supper and the ball-room chairs. They had
also inaugurated the custom of letting the ladies take
their cloaks off in the hall, instead of shuffling up to
the hostess's bedroom and recurling their hair with the
aid of the gas-burner; Beaufort was understood to have
said that he supposed all his wife's friends had maids
who saw to it that they were properly coiffees when
they left home.
Then the house had been boldly planned with a
ball-room, so that, instead of squeezing through a narrow
passage to get to it (as at the Chiverses') one
marched solemnly down a vista of enfiladed drawing-rooms (the sea-green, the crimson and the bouton d'or),
seeing from afar the many-candled lustres reflected in
the polished parquetry, and beyond that the depths of a
conservatory where camellias and tree-ferns arched their
costly foliage over seats of black and gold bamboo.
Newland Archer, as became a young man of his
position, strolled in somewhat late. He had left his
overcoat with the silk-stockinged footmen (the stockings
were one of Beaufort's few fatuities), had dawdled
a while in the library hung with Spanish leather and
furnished with Buhl and malachite, where a few men
were chatting and putting on their dancing-gloves, and
had finally joined the line of guests whom Mrs. Beaufort
was receiving on the threshold of the crimson
drawing-room.
Archer was distinctly nervous. He had not gone back
to his club after the Opera (as the young bloods usually
did), but, the night being fine, had walked for some
distance up Fifth Avenue before turning back in the
direction of the Beauforts' house. He was definitely
afraid that the Mingotts might be going too far; that,
in fact, they might have Granny Mingott's orders to
bring the Countess Olenska to the ball.
From the tone of the club box he had perceived how
grave a mistake that would be; and, though he was
more than ever determined to "see the thing through,"
he felt less chivalrously eager to champion his betrothed's
cousin than before their brief talk at the Opera.
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