Free The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton

young couple a house in London. Do you suppose this is likely? They can’t keep up any sort of establishment in London without a fairly large income; and I hear Mr. Closson’s position in Wall Street is rather shaky.”
    Miss Testvalley took refuge in one of her Italian gestures of conjecture. “Governesses, you know, Mrs. Parmore, hear so much less gossip than dress-makers and ladies’ maids; and I am not Miss Closson’s governess.”
    â€œNo; fortunately for you! For I believe there were rather unpleasant rumours at Saratoga. People were bound to find a reason for such a hurried marriage.... But your pupils have been asked to be bridesmaids, I understand?”
    â€œThe girls got to know each other last summer. And you know how exciting it is, especially for a child of Annabel St. George’s age, to figure for the first time in a wedding procession.”
    â€œYes. I suppose they haven’t many chances.... But shouldn’t you like to come upstairs and see Alida’s Assembly dress? Mrs. Connelly has just sent it home, and your pupils might like to hear about it. White tulle, of course—nothing will ever replace white tulle for a débutante, will it?”
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Miss Testvalley, after that visit, felt that she had cast in her lot once for all with the usurpers and the adventurers. Perhaps because she herself had been born in exile, her sympathies were with the social as well as the political outcasts—with the weepers by the waters of Babylon rather than those who barred the doors of the Assembly against them. Describe Miss Parmore’s white tulle to her pupils, indeed! What she meant—but how accomplish it?—was to get cards for the Assembly for Mrs. St. George and Virginia, and to see to it that the latter’s dress outdid Miss Parmore’s as much as her beauty over-shadowed that young woman’s.
    But how? Through Lord Richard Marable? Well, that was perhaps not impossible.... Miss Testvalley had detected, in Mrs. Parmore, a faint but definite desire to make the young man’s acquaintance, even to have him on the list of her next dinner. She would like to show him, poor young fellow, her manner implied, that there are houses in New York where a scion of the English aristocracy may feel himself at home, and discover (though, alas, too late!) that there are American girls comparable to his own sisters in education and breeding.
    Since the announcement of Conchita’s engagement, and the return of the two families to New York, there had been a good deal of coming and going between the St. George and Closson households—rather too much to suit Miss Testvalley. But she had early learned to adapt herself to her pupils’ whims while maintaining her authority over them, and she preferred to accompany Nan to the Fifth Avenue Hotel rather than let her go there without her. Virginia, being “out,” could come and go as she pleased; but among the Parmores and Eglintons, in whose code Mrs. St. George was profoundly versed, girls in the school-room did not walk about New York alone, much less call at hotels, and Nan, fuming yet resigned—for she had already grown unaccountably attached to her governess—had to submit to Miss Testvalley’s conducting her to the Closson apartment, and waiting below when she was to be fetched. Sometimes, at Mrs. Closson’s request, the governess went in with her charge. Mrs. Closson was almost always in her dressing-room, since leaving it necessitated encasing her soft frame in stays and a heavily whale-boned dress; and she preferred sitting at her piano, or lying on the sofa with a novel and a cigarette, in an atmosphere of steam-heat and heavily scented flowers, and amid a litter of wedding-presents and bridal finery. She was a good-natured woman, friendly and even confidential with everybody who came her way, and, when she caught sight of Miss Testvalley behind her charge, often called to