let me announce it this evening at the ball."
Miss Welland's face grew rosy as the dawn, and she looked at him with radiant eyes. "If you can persuade Mamma," she said; "but why should we change what is already settled?" He made no answer but that which his eyes returned, and she added, still more confidently smiling: "Tell my cousin yourself: I give you leave. She says she used to play with you when you were children."
She made way for him by pushing back her chair, and promptly, and a
tried it on."
II.
Newland Archer, during this brief episode, had been thrown into a strange state of embarrassment.
It was annoying that the box which was thus attracting the undivided attention of masculine New York should be that in which his betrothed was seated between her mother and aunt;