With a groan he plunged back into his book. 

 "NEWLAND! Do listen. Your friend Madame Olenska was at Mrs. Lemuel Struthers's party last night: she went there with the Duke and Mr. Beaufort." 

 At the last clause of this announcement a senseless anger swelled the young man's breast. To smother it he laughed.  "Well, what of it? I knew she meant to." 

 Janey paled and her eyes began to project.  "You knew she meant to—and you didn't try to stop her? To warn her?" 

 "Stop her? Warn her?"  He laughed again.  "I'm not engaged to be married to the Countess Olenska!"  The words had a fantastic sound in his own ears. 

 "You're marrying into her family." 

 "Oh, family—family!" he jeered. 

 "Newland—don't you care about Family?" 

 "Not a brass farthing." 

 "Nor about what cousin Louisa van der Luyden will think?" 

 "Not the half of one—if she thinks such old maid's rubbish." 

 "Mother is not an old maid," said his virgin sister with pinched lips. 

 He felt like shouting back:  "Yes, she is, and so are the van der Luydens, and so we all are, when it comes to being so much as brushed by the wing-tip of Reality." But he saw her long gentle face puckering into tears, and felt ashamed of the useless pain he was inflicting. 

 "Hang Countess Olenska! Don't be a goose, Janey—I'm not her keeper." 

 "No; but you DID ask the Wellands to announce your engagement sooner so that we might all back her up; and if it hadn't been for that cousin Louisa would never have invited her to the dinner for the Duke." 

 "Well—what harm was there in inviting her? She was the best-looking woman in the room; she made the dinner a little less funereal than the usual van der Luyden banquet." 

 "You know cousin Henry asked her to please you: he persuaded cousin Louisa. And now they're so upset that they're going back to 

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