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appreciative laugh. "Oh, Newland, how funny! Isn't that FRENCH?"
On the whole, he was glad to have the matter settled for him by her refusing to take seriously his wish to
invite M. Riviere. Another after-dinner talk would have made it difficult to avoid the question of New York;
and the more Archer considered it the less he was able to fit M. Riviere into any conceivable picture of New
York as he knew it.
He perceived with a flash of chilling insight that in future many problems would be thus negatively solved for
him; but as he paid the hansom and followed his wife's long train into the house he took refuge in the
comforting platitude that the first six months were always the most difficult in marriage. "After that I suppose
we shall have pretty nearly finished rubbing off each other's angles," he reflected; but the worst of it was that
May's pressure was already bearing on the very angles whose sharpness he most wanted to keep.
XXI.
The small bright lawn stretched away smoothly to the big bright sea.
The turf was hemmed with an edge of scarlet geranium and coleus, and cast-iron vases painted in chocolate
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colour, standing at intervals along the winding path that led to the sea, looped their garlands of petunia and ivy
geranium above the neatly raked gravel.
Half way between the edge of the cliff and the square wooden house (which was also chocolate-coloured, but
with the tin roof of the verandah striped in yellow and brown to represent an awning) two large targets had
been placed against a background of shrubbery. On the other side of the lawn, facing the targets, was pitched a
real tent, with benches and garden-seats about it. A number of ladies in summer dresses and gentlemen in
grey frock-coats and tall hats stood on the lawn or sat upon the benches; and every now and then a slender
girl in starched muslin would step from the tent, bow in hand, and speed her shaft at one of the targets, while
the spectators interrupted their talk to watch the result.
Newland Archer, standing on the verandah of the house, looked curiously down upon this scene. On each side
of the shiny painted steps was a large blue china flower-pot on a bright yellow china stand. A spiky green
plant filled each pot, and below the verandah ran a wide border of blue hydrangeas edged with more red
geraniums. Behind him, the French windows of the drawing-rooms through which he had passed gave
glimpses, between swaying lace curtains, of glassy parquet floors islanded with chintz poufs, dwarf armchairs,
and velvet tables covered with trifles in silver.
The Newport Archery Club always held its August meeting at the Beauforts'. The sport, which had hitherto
known no rival but croquet, was beginning to be discarded in favour of lawn-tennis; but the latter game was
still considered too rough and inelegant for social occasions, and as an opportunity to show off pretty dresses
and graceful attitudes the bow and arrow held their own.
Archer looked down with wonder at the familiar spectacle. It surprised him that life should be going on in the
old way when his own reactions to it had so completely changed. It was Newport that had first brought home
to him the extent of the change. In New York, during the previous winter, after he and May had settled down
in the new greenish-yellow house with the bow-window and the Pompeian vestibule, he had dropped back
with relief into the old routine of the office, and the renewal of this daily activity had served as a link with his
former self. Then there had been the pleasurable excitement of choosing a showy grey stepper for May's
brougham (the Wellands had given the carriage), and the abiding occupation and interest of arranging his new
library, which, in spite of family doubts and disapprovals, had been carried out as he had dreamed, with a dark
embossed paper, Eastlake book-cases and "sincere" arm-chairs and tables. At the Century he had found
Winsett again, and at the Knickerbocker the fashionable young men of his own set; and what with the hours
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