Mingott turned to Archer.
"Run down and fetch her, like a good grandson; this
pretty lady will describe the party to me," she said; and
Archer stood up as if in a dream.
He had heard the Countess Olenska's name pronounced
often enough during the year and a half since
they had last met, and was even familiar with the main
incidents of her life in the interval. He knew that she
had spent the previous summer at Newport, where she
appeared to have gone a great deal into society, but
that in the autumn she had suddenly sub-let the "perfect
house" which Beaufort had been at such pains to
find for her, and decided to establish herself in
Washington. There, during the winter, he had heard of her
(as one always heard of pretty women in Washington)
as shining in the "brilliant diplomatic society" that was
supposed to make up for the social short-comings of
the Administration. He had listened to these accounts,
and to various contradictory reports on her appearance,
her conversation, her point of view and her choice
of friends, with the detachment with which one listens
to reminiscences of some one long since dead; not till
Medora suddenly spoke her name at the archery match
had Ellen Olenska become a living presence to him
again. The Marchioness's foolish lisp had called up a
vision of the little fire-lit drawing-room and the sound
of the carriage-wheels returning down the deserted street.
He thought of a story he had read, of some peasant
children in Tuscany lighting a bunch of straw in a
wayside cavern, and revealing old silent images in their
painted tomb .
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