The House of Mirth

by Edith Wharton

“That shows how seldom you come there. Why don’t you come oftener?” “When I do come, it’s not to look at Mrs. Peniston’s furniture.” “Nonsense,” she said. “You don’t come at all—and yet we get on so well when we meet.” “Perhaps that’s the reason,” he answered promptly.

The provocation in her eyes increased his amusement—he had not supposed she would waste her powder on such small game; but perhaps she was only keeping her hand in; or perhaps a girl of her type had no conversation but of the personal kind.

“Well, then,” he said with a plunge, “perhaps that’s the reason.” “What?” “The fact that you don’t want to marry me. Perhaps I don’t regard it as such a strong inducement to go and see you.”

“Don’t you see,” she continued, “that there are men enough to say pleasant things to me, and that what I want is a friend who won’t be afraid to say disagreeable ones when I need them?

Sometimes I have fancied you might be that friend—I don’t know why, except that you are neither a prig nor a bounder, and that I shouldn’t have to pretend with you or be on my guard against you.” Her voice had dropped to a note of seriousness, and she sat gazing up at him with the troubled gravity of a child.

“You don’t know how much I need such a fri...

Ah, there’s the difference—a girl must, a man may if he chooses.” She surveyed him critically. “Your coat’s a little shabby—but who cares? It doesn’t keep people from asking you to dine.

If I were shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself. The clothes are the background, the frame, if you like: they don’t make success, but they are a part of it.

Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop—and if we can’t keep it up alone,...

“Ah, well, there must be plenty of capital on the look-out for such an investment. Perhaps you’ll meet your fate tonight at the Trenors’.”

those big parties bore me.” “Ah, so they do me,” she exclaimed. “Then why go?” “It’s part of the business—you forget! And besides, if I didn’t, I should be playing bezique with my aunt at Richfield Springs.”

“That’s almost as bad as marrying Dillworth,” he agreed, and they both laughed for pure pleasure in their sudden intimacy.

The poor thing was probably dazzled by such an unwonted apparition. But were such apparitions unwonted on Selden’s stairs?

“The Benedick?” She looked gently puzzled. “Is that the name of this building?” “Yes, that’s the name: I believe it’s an old word for bachelor, isn’t it?

Most timidities have such secret compensations, and Miss Bart was discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in proportion to the outer self-depreciation.

With a more confident person, she would not have dared to dwell so long on one topic, or to show such exaggerated interest in it; but she had rightly guessed that Mr. Gryce’s egoism was a thirsty soil, requiring constant nurture from without.

Miss Bart had the gift of following an undercurrent of thought while she appeared to be sailing on...

At most, it might amuse her to make sport of his simplicity for an evening—after that he would be merely a burden to her, and knowing this, she was far too experienced to encourage him.

She had been bored all the afternoon by Percy Gryce—the mere thought seemed to waken an echo of his droning voice—but she could not ignore him on the morrow, she must follow up her success, must submit to more boredom, must be ready with fresh compliances and adaptabilities, and all on the bare chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour of boring her for life.

Golddigging 101

No; she was not made for mean and shabby surroundings, for the squalid compromises of poverty. Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury; it was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe in.

But the luxury of others was not what she wanted. A few years ago, it had sufficed her: she had taken her daily meed of pleasure without caring who provided it. Now she was beginning to chafe at the obligations it imposed,

As she sat before the mirror brushing her hair, her face looked hollow and pale, and she was frightened by two little lines near her mouth, faint flaws in the smooth curve of the cheek.

A house in which no one ever dined at home unless there was “company”; a door-bell perpetually ringing; a hall-table showered with square envelopes which were opened in haste, and oblong envelopes which were allowed to gather dust in the depths of a bronze jar;

a series of French and English maids giving warning amid a chaos of hurriedly-ransacked wardrobes and dress-closets; an equally changing dynasty of nurses and footmen; quarrels in the pantry, the kitchen and the drawing-room; precipitate trips to Europe, and returns with gorged trunks and days of interminable unpacking;

In this desultory yet agitated fashion life went on through Lily’s teens: a zig-zag broken course down which the family craft glided on a rapid current of amusement, tugged at by the underflow of a perpetual need—the need of more money.

Lily could not recall the time when there had been money enough,

to the lady and her acquaintances there was something heroic in living as though one were much richer than one’s bank-book denoted.

She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making, and it was odious to her that her husband should make a show of himself before the servants.

She sank into a kind of furious apathy, a state of inert anger against fate.

She was beginning to have fits of angry rebellion against fate, when she longed to drop out of the race and make an independent life for herself.

She knew that she hated dinginess as much as her mother had hated it, and to her last breath she meant to fight against it, dragging herself up again and again above its flood till she gained the bright pinnacles of success which presented such a slippery surface to her clutch.

Ned Silverton can’t take his eyes off Carry Fisher—poor boy!