Summary

In Chapter 1 of Book Two the story picks up three years later and moves to the home of Clyde’s rich uncle Samuel in Lycurgus, a small town in New York. The family is awaiting the return of Samuel, who has been away on business in Chicago. Samuel’s seventeen-year-old daughter Bella tells her mother, Elizabeth, about the new lakeside bungalow the Finchley family is building and how she can’t wait until she can go there with her friends. Enter twenty-three-year-old Gilbert Griffiths, the only son. He appears disinterested in his sister’s gossip but secretly envies the excitement the Finchleys and Cranstons have introduced into their wealthy Lycurgus social circle.

In Chapter 2, soon after Samuel returns home, he is chatted up by Bella about the Finchleys. At dinner, he tells his family about his unexpected encounter with his nephew Clyde, the...