“How can you talk so, Lily? Of course the money ought to have been yours, but after all, that makes no difference. The important thing—” Gerty paused, and then continued firmly: “The important thing is that you should clear yourself—should tell your friends the whole truth.”

  “The whole truth?” Miss Bart laughed. “What is truth? Where a woman is concerned, it’s the story that’s easiest to believe. In this case it’s a great deal easier to believe Bertha Dorset’s story than mine, because she has a big house and an opera box, and it’s convenient to be on good terms with her.”

  Miss Farish still fixed her with an anxious gaze. “But what is your story, Lily? I don’t believe any one knows it yet.”

  “My story? I don’t believe I know it myself. You see, I never thought of preparing a version in advance as Bertha did; and if I had, I don’t think I should take the trouble to use it now.”

  But Gerty continued with her quiet reasonableness: “I don’t want a version prepared in advance, but I want you to tell me exactly what happened from the beginning.”

  “From the beginning?” Miss Bart gently mimicked her. “Dear Gerty, how little imagination you good people have! Why, the beginning was in my cradle, I suppose, in the way I was brought up and the things I was taught to care for. Or, no, I won’t blame anybody for my faults; I’ll say it was in my blood, that I got it from some wicked pleasure-loving ancestress who reacted against the homely virtues of New Amsterdam and wanted to be back at the court of the Charleses!” And as Miss Farish continued to press her with troubled eyes, she went on impatiently: “You asked me just now for the truth; well, the truth about any girl is that once she’s talked about she’s done for; and the more she explains her case the worse it looks. My good Gerty, you don’t happen to have a cigarette about you?”

  In her stuffy room at the hotel to which she had gone on landing, Lily Bart that evening reviewed her situation. It was the last week in June, and none of her friends were in town. The few relatives who had stayed on, or returned, for the reading of Mrs. Peniston’s will, had taken flight again that afternoon to Newport or Long Island; and not one of them had made any proffer of hospitality to Lily. For the first time in her life she found herself utterly alone except for Gerty Farish. Even at the actual moment of her break with the Dorsets she had not had so keen a sense of its consequences, for the Duchess of Beltshire, hearing of the catastrophe from Lord Hubert, had instantly offered her protection, and under her sheltering wing Lily had made an almost triumphant progress to London. There she had been sorely tempted to linger on in a society which asked of her only to amuse and charm it, without inquiring too curiously how she had acquired her gift for doing so; but Selden, before they parted, had pressed on her the urgent need of returning at once to her aunt, and Lord Hubert, when he presently reappeared in London, abounded in the same counsel. Lily did not need to be told that the Duchess’ championship was not the best road to social rehabilitation, and as she was besides aware that her noble defender might at any moment drop her in favour of a new protégée, she reluctantly decided to return to America. But she had not been ten minutes on her native shore before she realized that she had delayed too long to regain it. The Dorsets, the Stepneys, the Brys—all the actors and witnesses in the miserable drama—had preceded her with their version of the case; and even had she seen the least chance of gaining a hearing for her own, some obscure disdain and reluctance would have restrained her. She knew it was not by explanations and counter-charges that she could ever hope to recover her lost standing; but even had she felt the least trust in their efficacy, she would still have been held back by the feeling which had kept her from defending herself to Gerty Farish, a feeling that was half pride and half humiliation. For though she knew she had been ruthlessly sacrificed to Bertha Dorset’s determination to win back her husband, and though her own relation to Dorset had been that of the merest good-fellowship, yet she had been perfectly aware from the outset that her part in the affair was, as Carry Fisher brutally put it, to distract Dorset’s attention from his wife. That was what she was “there for”: it was the price she had chosen to pay for three months of luxury and freedom from care. Her habit of resolutely facing the facts, in her rare moments of introspection, did not now allow her to put any false gloss on the situation. She had suffered for the very faithfulness with which she had carried out her part of the tacit compact, but the part was not a handsome one at best, and she saw it now in all the ugliness of failure.

  She saw, too, in the same uncompromising light, the train of consequences resulting from that failure; and these became clearer to her with every day of her weary lingering in town. She stayed on partly for the comfort of Gerty Farish’s nearness and partly for lack of knowing where to go. She understood well enough the nature of the task before her. She must set out to regain, little by little, the position she had lost; and the first step in the tedious task was to find out, as soon as possible, on how many of her friends she could count. Her hopes were mainly centred on Mrs. Trenor, who had treasures of easy-going tolerance for those who were amusing or useful to her, and in the noisy rush of whose existence the still small voice of detraction was slow to make itself heard. But Judy, though she must have been apprised of Miss Bart’s return, had not even recognized it by the formal note of condolence which her friend’s bereavement demanded. Any advance on Lily’s side might have been perilous; there was nothing to do but to trust to the happy chance of an accidental meeting, and Lily knew that, even so late in the season, there was always a hope of running across her friends in their frequent passages through town.

  To this end she assiduously showed herself at the restaurants they frequented, where, attended by the troubled Gerty, she lunched luxuriously, as she said, on her expectations.

  “My dear Gerty, you wouldn’t have me let the head-waiter see that I’ve nothing to live on but Aunt Julia’s legacy? Think of Grace Stepney’s satisfaction if she came in and found us lunching on cold mutton and tea! What sweet shall we have today, dear—Coupe Jacques or Pêches à la Melba?”

  She dropped the menu abruptly, with a quick heightening of colour, and Gerty, following her glance, was aware of the advance, from an inner room, of a party headed by Mrs. Trenor and Carry Fisher. It was impossible for these ladies and their companions—among whom Lily had at once distinguished both Trenor and Rosedale—not to pass, in going out, the table at which the two girls were seated; and Gerty’s sense of the fact betrayed itself in the helpless trepidation of her manner. Miss Bart, on the contrary, borne forward on the wave of her buoyant grace, and neither shrinking from her friends nor appearing to lie in wait for them, gave to the encounter the touch of naturalness which she could impart to the most strained situations. Such embarrassment as was shown was on Mrs. Trenor’s side, and manifested itself in the mingling of exaggerated warmth with imperceptible reservations. Her loudly affirmed pleasure at seeing Miss Bart took the form of a nebulous generalization, which included neither inquiries as to her future nor the expression of a definite wish to see her again. Lily, well-versed in the language of these omissions, knew that they were equally intelligible to the other members of the party; even Rosedale, flushed as he was with the importance of keeping such company, at once took the temperature of Mrs. Trenor’s cordiality and reflected it in his off-hand greeting of Miss Bart. Trenor, red and uncomfortable, had cut short his salutations on the pretext of a word to say to the head-waiter; and the rest of the group soon melted away in Mrs. Trenor’s wake.

  It was over in a moment; the waiter, menu in hand, still hung on the result of the choice between Coupe Jacques and Pêches à la Melba, but Miss Bart, in the interval, had taken the measure of her fate. Where Judy Trenor led, all the world would follow, and Lily had the doomed sense of the castaway who has signalled in vain to fleeing sails.

  In a flash she remembered Mrs. Trenor’s complaints of Carry Fisher’s rapacity and saw that they denoted an unexpected acquaintance with her husband’s private affairs. In the large tumultuous disorder of the life at Bellomont, where no one seemed to have time to observe any one else and private aims and personal interests were swept along unheeded in the rush of collective activities, Lily had fancied herself sheltered from inconvenient scrutiny; but if Judy knew when Mrs. Fisher borrowed money of her husband, was she likely to ignore the same transaction on Lily’s part? If she was careless of his affections, she was plainly jealous of his pocket; and in that fact Lily read the explanation of her rebuff. The immediate result of these conclusions was the passionate resolve to pay back her debt to Trenor. That obligation discharged, she would have but a thousand dollars of Mrs. Peniston’s legacy left, and nothing to live on but her own small income, which was considerably less than Gerty Farish’s wretched pittance; but this consideration gave way to the imperative claim of her wounded pride. She must be quits with the Trenors first; after that she would take thought for the future.

  In her ignorance of legal procrastinations, she had supposed that her legacy would be paid over within a few days of the reading of her aunt’s will; and after an interval of anxious suspense, she wrote to inquire the cause of the delay. There was another interval before Mrs. Peniston’s lawyer, who was also one of the executors, replied to the effect that, some questions having arisen relative to the interpretation of the will, he and his associates might not be in a position to pay the legacies till the close of the twelvemonth legally allotted for their settlement. Bewildered and indignant, Lily resolved to try the effect of a personal appeal, but she returned from her expedition with a sense of the powerlessness of beauty and charm against the unfeeling processes of the law. It seemed intolerable to live on for another year under the weight of her debt; and in her extremity she decided to turn to Miss Stepney, who still lingered in town, immersed in the delectable duty of “going over” her benefactress’ effects. It was bitter enough for Lily to ask a favour of Grace Stepney, but the alternative was bitterer still; and one morning she presented herself at Mrs. Peniston’s, where Grace, for the facilitation of her pious task, had taken up a provisional abode.

  The strangeness of entering as a suppliant the house where she had so long commanded increased Lily’s desire to shorten the ordeal; and when Miss Stepney entered the darkened drawing-room, rustling with the best quality of crape, her visitor went straight to the point: would she be willing to advance the amount of the expected legacy?

  Grace, in reply, wept and wondered at the request, bemoaned the inexorableness of the law, and was astonished that Lily had not realized the exact similarity of their position. Did she think that only the payment of the legacies had been delayed? Why, Miss Stepney herself had not received a penny of her inheritance, and was paying rent—yes, actually!—for the privilege of living in a house that belonged to her. She was sure it was not what poor dear cousin Julia would have wished—she had told the executors so to their faces; but they were inaccessible to reason, and there was nothing to do but to wait. Let Lily take example by her, and be patient; let them both remember how beautifully patient cousin Julia had always been.

  Lily made a movement which showed her imperfect assimilation of this example. “But you will have everything, Grace; it would be easy for you to borrow ten times the amount I am asking for.”

  “Borrow, easy for me to borrow?” Grace Stepney rose up before her in sable wrath. “Do you imagine for a moment that I would raise money on my expectations from cousin Julia when I know so well her unspeakable horror of every transaction of the sort? Why, Lily, if you must know the truth, it was the idea of your being in debt that brought on her illness—you remember, she had a slight attack before you sailed. Oh, I don’t know the particulars, of course—I don’t want to know them—but there were rumours about your affairs that made her most unhappy; no one could be with her without seeing that. I can’t help it if you are offended by my telling you this now; if I can do anything to make you realize the folly of your course, and how deeply she disapproved of it, I shall feel it is the truest way of making up to you for her loss.”

  V

  It seemed to Lily, as Mrs. Peniston’s door closed on her, that she was taking a final leave of her old life. The future stretched before her dull and bare as the deserted length of Fifth Avenue, and opportunities showed as meagrely as the few cabs trailing in quest of fares that did not come. The completeness of the analogy was, however, disturbed as she reached the side-walk by the rapid approach of a hansom which pulled up at sight of her.

  From beneath its luggage-laden top she caught the wave of a signalling hand; and the next moment Mrs. Fisher, springing to the street, had folded her in a demonstrative embrace.

  “My dear, you don’t mean to say you’re still in town? When I saw you the other day at Sherry’s I didn’t have time to ask—” She broke off, and added with a burst of frankness: “The truth is I was horrid, Lily, and I’ve wanted to tell you so ever since.”

  “Oh—” Miss Bart protested, drawing back from her penitent clasp; but Mrs. Fisher went on with her usual directness: “Look here, Lily, don’t let’s beat about the bush; half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn’t any. That’s not my way, and I can only say I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself for following the other women’s lead. But we’ll talk of that by and by—tell me now where you’re staying and what your plans are. I don’t suppose you’re keeping house in there with Grace Stepney, eh? And it struck me you might be rather at loose ends.”

  In Lily’s present mood there was no resisting the honest friendliness of this appeal, and she said with a smile: “I am at loose ends for the moment, but Gerty Farish is still in town and she’s good enough to let me be with her whenever she can spare the time.”

  Mrs. Fisher made a slight grimace. “H’m—that’s a temperate joy. Oh, I know—Gerty’s a trump, and worth all the rest of us put together; but à la longue you’re used to a little higher seasoning, aren’t you, dear? And besides, I suppose she’ll be off herself before long—the first of August, you say? Well, look here, you can’t spend your summer in town; we’ll talk of that later too. But meanwhile, what do you say to putting a few things in a trunk and coming down with me to the Sam Gormers’ to-night?”

  And as Lily stared at the breathless suddenness of the suggestion, she continued with her easy laugh: “You don’t know them and they don’t know you; but that don’t make a rap of difference. They’ve taken the Van Alstyne place at Roslyn, and I’ve got carte blanche to bring my friends down there—the more the merrier. They do things awfully well, and there’s to be rather a jolly party there this week—” She broke off, checked by an undefinable change in Miss Bart’s expression. “Oh, I don’t mean your particular set, you know: rather a different crowd, but very good fun. The fact is, the Gormers have struck out on a line of their own; what they want is to have a good time, and to have it in their own way. They gave the other thing a few months’ trial, under my distinguished auspices, and they were really doing extremely well—getting on a good deal faster than the Brys, just because they didn’t care as much—but suddenly they decided that the whole business bored them and that what they wanted was a crowd they could really feel at home with. Rather original of them, don’t you think so? Mattie Gormer has got aspirations still; women always have; but she’s awfully easy-going, and Sam won’t be bothered, and they both like to be the most important people in sight, so they’ve started a sort of continuous performance of their own, a kind of social Coney Island, where everybody is welcome who can make noise enough and doesn’t put on airs. I think it’s awfully good fun myself—some of the artistic set, you know, any pretty actress that’s going, and so on. This week, for instance, they have Audrey Anstell, who made such a hit last spring in The Winning of Winny; and Paul Morpeth—he’s painting Mattie Gormer; and the Dick Bellingers, and Kate Corby—well, every one you can think of who’s jolly and makes a row. Now don’t stand there with your nose in the air, my dear—it will be a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town, and you’ll find clever people as well as noisy ones. Morpeth, who admires Mattie enormously, always brings one or two of his set.”

  Mrs. Fisher drew Lily toward the hansom with friendly authority. “Jump in now, there’s a dear, and we’ll drive round to your hotel and have your things packed, and then we’ll have tea, and the two maids can meet us at the train.”

  It was a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town—of that no doubt remained to Lily as, reclining in the shade of a leafy veranda, she looked seaward across a stretch of greensward picturesquely dotted with groups of ladies in lace raiment and men in tennis flannels. The huge Van Alstyne house and its rambling dependencies were packed to their fullest capacity with the Gormers’ week-end guests, who now, in the radiance of the Sunday forenoon, were dispersing themselves over the grounds in quest of the various distractions the place afforded: distractions ranging from tennis-courts to shooting-galleries, from bridge and whisky within doors to motors and steam-launches without. Lily had the odd sense of having been caught up into the crowd as carelessly as a passenger is gathered in by an express train. The blond and genial Mrs. Gormer might, indeed, have figured the conductor, calmly assigning seats to the rush of travellers, while Carry Fisher represented the porter pushing their bags into place, giving them their numbers for the dining-car, and warning them when their station was at hand. The train, meanwhile, had scarcely slackened speed; life whizzed on with a deafening rattle and roar, in which one traveller at least found a welcome refuge from the sound of her own thoughts.

  The Gormer milieu represented a social outskirt which Lily had always fastidiously avoided; but it struck her, now that she was in it, as only a flamboyant copy of her own world, a caricature approximating the real thing as the “society play” approaches the manners of the drawing-room. The people about her were doing the same things as the Trenors, the Van Osburghs, and the Dorsets; the difference lay in a hundred shades of aspect and manner, from the pattern of the men’s waistcoats to the inflexion of the women’s voices. Everything was pitched in a higher key, and there was more of each thing: more noise, more colour, more champagne, more familiarity, but also greater good-nature, less rivalry, and a fresher capacity for enjoyment.