Skuytercliff tomorrow. I think, Newland, you'd better come down. You don't seem to understand how mother feels." In the drawing-room Newland found his mother. She raised a troubled brow from her needlework to ask: "Has Janey told you?" "Yes." He tried to keep his tone as measured as her own. "But I can't take it very seriously." "Not the fact of having offended cousin Louisa and cousin Henry?" "The fact that they can be offended by such a trifle as Countess Olenska's going to the house of a woman they consider common." "Consider—!" "Well, who is; but who has good music, and amuses people on Sunday evenings, when the whole of New York is dying of inanition." "Good music? All I know is, there was a woman who got up on a table and sang the things they sing at the places you go to in Paris. There was smoking and champagne." "Well—that kind of thing happens in other places, and the world still goes on." "I don't suppose, dear, you're really defending the French Sunday?" "I've heard you often enough, mother, grumble at the English Sunday when we've been in London." "New York is neither Paris nor London." "Oh, no, it's not!" her son groaned. "You mean, I suppose, that society here is not as brilliant? You're right, I daresay; but we belong here, and people should respect our ways when they come among us. Ellen Olenska especially: she came back to get away from the kind of life people lead in brilliant societies." Newland made no answer, and after a moment his mother ventured: "I was going to put on my bonnet and ask you to take me to see cousin Louisa for a moment before dinner." He frowned, and she continued: "I thought you might explain to her what you've just said: that society abroad is different ... that people are not as particular, and that Madame Olenska may not have realised how we feel about such things. It would be, you know, dear," she added with an innocent adroitness, "in Madame Olenska's interest if you did." "Dearest mother, I really don't see how we're concerned
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