EDITH WHARTON Authoritative Collected Works (Special NOOK Edition) All Major Works incl. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, ETHAN FROME, THE HOUSE OF MIRTH (Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction)
EXCERPT
No expense had been spared on the setting, which was acknowledged to be very beautiful even by people who shared his acquaintance with the Opera houses of Paris and Vienna. The foreground, to the footlights, was covered with emerald green cloth. In the middle distance symmetrical mounds of woolly green moss bounded by croquet hoops formed the base of shrubs shaped like orange-trees but studded with large pink and red roses. Gigantic pansies, considerably larger than the roses, and closely resembling the floral pen-wipers made by female parishioners for fashionable clergymen, sprang from the moss beneath the rose-trees; and here and there a daisy grafted on a rose-branch flowered with a luxuriance prophetic of Mr. Luther Burbank’s far-off prodigies.
In the centre of this enchanted garden Madame Nilsson, in white cashmere slashed with pale blue satin, a reticule dangling from a blue girdle, and large yellow braids carefully disposed on each side of her muslin chemisette, listened with downcast eyes to M. Capoul’s impassioned wooing, and affected a guileless incomprehension of his designs whenever, by word or glance, he persuasively indicated the ground floor window of the neat brick villa projecting obliquely from the right wing.
“The darling!” thought Newland Archer, his glance flitting back to the young girl with the lilies-of-the-valley. “She doesn’t even guess what it’s all about.” And he contemplated her absorbed young face with a thrill of possessorship in which pride in his own masculine initiation was mingled with a tender reverence for her abysmal purity. “We’ll read Faust together ... by the Italian lakes ...” he thought, somewhat hazily confusing the scene of his projected honey-moon with the masterpieces of literature which it would be his manly privilege to reveal to his bride. It was only that afternoon that May Welland had let him guess that she “cared” (New York’s consecrated phrase of maiden avowal), and already his imagination, leaping ahead of the engagement ring, the betrothal kiss and the march from Lohengrin, pictured her at his side in some scene of old European witchery.
He did not in the least wish the future Mrs. Newland Archer to be a simpleton. He meant her (thanks to his enlightening companionship) to develop a social tact and readiness of wit enabling her to hold her own with the most popular married women of the “younger set,” in which it was the recognised custom to attract masculine homage while playfully discouraging it. If he had probed to the bottom of his vanity (as he sometimes nearly did) he would have found there the wish that his wife should be as worldly-wise and as eager to please as the married lady whose charms had held his fancy through two mildly agitated years.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE TOUCHSTONE
THE VALLEY OF DECISION
SANCTUARY
THE HOUSE OF MIRTH
MADAME DE TREYMES
FRUIT OF THE TREE
ETHAN FROME
THE REEF
THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY
BUNNER SISTERS
SUMMER
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON
FALSE DAWN
THE OLD MAID
THE SPARK
NEW YEAR’S DAY
THE MOTHER'S RECOMPENSE
TWILIGHT SLEEP
THE CHILDREN
HUDSON RIVER BRACKETED
THE GODS ARRIVE
CRUCIAL INSTANCES
THE DUCHESS AT PRAYER
THE ANGEL AT THE GRAVE
THE RECOVERY
“COPY” A DIALOGUE
THE REMBRANDT
THE MOVING FINGER
THE CONFESSIONAL
THE DESCENT OF MAN AND OTHER STORIES
THE DESCENT OF MAN
THE OTHER TWO
EXPIATION
THE LADY’S MAID’S BELL
THE MISSION OF JANE
THE RECKONING
THE LETTER
THE DILETTANTE
THE QUICKSAND
A VENETIAN NIGHT’S ENTERTAINMENT
THE HERMIT AND THE WILD WOMAN AND OTHER STORIES
THE HERMIT AND THE WILD WOMAN
THE LAST ASSET
IN TRUST
THE PRETEXT
THE VERDICT
THE POT-BOILER
THE BEST MAN
TALES OF MEN AND GHOSTS
THE BOLTED DOOR
HIS FATHER’S SON
THE DAUNT DIANA
THE DEBT
FULL CIRCLE
THE LEGEND
THE EYES
THE BLOND BEAST
AFTERWARD
THE LETTERS
XINGU
THE CHOICE
COMING HOME
THE TRIUMPH OF NIGHT
KERFOL
AUTRES TEMPS ...
THE LONG RUN
HERE AND BEYOND
MISS MARY PASK
THE YOUNG GENTLEMEN
BEWITCHED
THE SEED OF THE FAITH
THE TEMPERATE ZONE
VELVET EAR-PADS
CERTAIN PEOPLE
ATROPHY
A BOTTLE OF PERRIER
AFTER HOLBEIN
DIEU D’AMOUR
THE REFUGEES
MR. JONES
A BACKWARD GLANCE
