“If things go on at this pace,” Lefferts thundered, looking like a young prophet dressed by Poole, and who had not yet been stoned, “we shall see our children fighting for invitations to swindlers’ houses, and marrying Beaufort’s bastards.”

“Oh, I say—­draw it mild!” Reggie Chivers and young Newland protested, while Mr. Selfridge Merry looked genuinely alarmed, and an expression of pain and disgust settled on Mr. van der Luyden’s sensitive face.

“Has he got any?” cried Mr. Sillerton Jackson, pricking up his ears; and while Lefferts tried to turn the question with a laugh, the old gentleman twittered into Archer’s ear:  “Queer, those fellows who are always wanting to set things right.  The people who have the worst cooks are always telling you they’re poisoned when they dine out.  But I hear there are pressing reasons for our friend Lawrence’s diatribe:—­typewriter this time, I understand. . . .”

The talk swept past Archer like some senseless river running and running because it did not know enough to stop.  He saw, on the faces about him, expressions of interest, amusement and even mirth.  He listened to the younger men’s laughter, and to the praise of the Archer Madeira, which Mr. van der Luyden and Mr. Merry were thoughtfully celebrating.  Through it all he was dimly aware of a general attitude of friendliness toward himself, as if the guard of the prisoner he felt himself to be were trying to soften his captivity; and the perception increased his passionate determination to be free.

In the drawing-room, where they presently joined the ladies, he met May’s triumphant eyes, and read in them the conviction that everything had “gone off” beautifully.  She rose from Madame Olenska’s side, and immediately Mrs. van der Luyden beckoned the latter to a seat on the gilt sofa where she throned.  Mrs. Selfridge Merry bore across the room to join them, and it became clear to Archer that here also a conspiracy of rehabilitation and obliteration was going on.  The silent organisation which held his little world together was determined to put itself on record as never for a moment having questioned the propriety of Madame Olenska’s conduct, or the completeness of Archer’s domestic felicity.  All these amiable and inexorable persons were resolutely engaged in pretending to each other that they had never heard of, suspected, or even conceived possible, the least hint to the contrary; and from this tissue of elaborate mutual dissimulation Archer once more disengaged the fact that New York believed him to be Madame Olenska’s lover.  He caught the glitter of victory in his wife’s eyes, and for the first time understood that she shared the belief.  The discovery roused a laughter of inner devils that reverberated through all his efforts to discuss the Martha Washington ball with Mrs. Reggie Chivers and little Mrs. Newland; and so the evening swept on, running and running like a senseless river that did not know how to stop.