"
She paused. "I knew you'd been the one friend she
could always count on; and I wanted her to know that
you and I were the same--in all our feelings."
She hesitated, as if waiting for him to speak, and
then added slowly: "She understood my wishing to tell
her this. I think she understands everything."
She went up to Archer, and taking one of his cold
hands pressed it quickly against her cheek.
"My head aches too; good-night, dear," she said,
and turned to the door, her torn and muddy wedding-
dress dragging after her across the room.
XXXIII.
It was, as Mrs. Archer smilingly said to Mrs. Welland,
a great event for a young couple to give their first
big dinner.
The Newland Archers, since they had set up their
household, had received a good deal of company in an
informal way. Archer was fond of having three or four
friends to dine, and May welcomed them with the
beaming readiness of which her mother had set her the
example in conjugal affairs. Her husband questioned
whether, if left to herself, she would ever have asked
any one to the house; but he had long given up trying
to disengage her real self from the shape into which
tradition and training had moulded her. It was
expected that well-off young couples in New York should
do a good deal of informal entertaining, and a Welland
married to an Archer was doubly pledged to the
tradition.
But a big dinner, with a hired chef and two
borrowed footmen, with Roman punch, roses from
Henderson's, and menus on gilt-edged cards, was a different
affair, and not to be lightly undertaken.
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