Book I
4. Chapter IV.
(continued)
To the general relief the Countess Olenska was not
present in her grandmother's drawing-room during the
visit of the betrothed couple. Mrs. Mingott said she
had gone out; which, on a day of such glaring sunlight,
and at the "shopping hour," seemed in itself an indelicate
thing for a compromised woman to do. But at any
rate it spared them the embarrassment of her presence,
and the faint shadow that her unhappy past might
seem to shed on their radiant future. The visit went off
successfully, as was to have been expected. Old Mrs.
Mingott was delighted with the engagement, which,
being long foreseen by watchful relatives, had been
carefully passed upon in family council; and the
engagement ring, a large thick sapphire set in invisible
claws, met with her unqualified admiration.
"It's the new setting: of course it shows the stone
beautifully, but it looks a little bare to old-fashioned
eyes," Mrs. Welland had explained, with a conciliatory
side-glance at her future son-in-law.
"Old-fashioned eyes? I hope you don't mean mine,
my dear? I like all the novelties," said the ancestress,
lifting the stone to her small bright orbs, which no
glasses had ever disfigured. "Very handsome," she added,
returning the jewel; "very liberal. In my time a cameo
set in pearls was thought sufficient. But it's the hand
that sets off the ring, isn't it, my dear Mr. Archer?"
and she waved one of her tiny hands, with small pointed
nails and rolls of aged fat encircling the wrist like ivory
bracelets. "Mine was modelled in Rome by the great
Ferrigiani. You should have May's done: no doubt he'll
have it done, my child. Her hand is large--it's these
modern sports that spread the joints--but the skin is
white.--And when's the wedding to be?" she broke off,
fixing her eyes on Archer's face.
"Oh--" Mrs. Welland murmured, while the young
man, smiling at his betrothed, replied: "As soon as ever
it can, if only you'll back me up, Mrs. Mingott."
"We must give them time to get to know each other
a little better, mamma," Mrs. Welland interposed, with
the proper affectation of reluctance; to which the
ancestress rejoined: "Know each other? Fiddlesticks!
Everybody in New York has always known everybody.
Let the young man have his way, my dear; don't wait
till the bubble's off the wine. Marry them before Lent;
I may catch pneumonia any winter now, and I want to
give the wedding-breakfast."
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