OLD NEW YORK FALSE DAWN (_The ’Forties_) By EDITH WHARTON OLD NEW YORK FALSE DAWN THE OLD MAID THE SPARK NEW YEAR’S DAY THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON THE AGE OF INNOCENCE SUMMER THE REEF THE MARNE FRENCH WAYS AND THEIR MEANING OLD NEW YORK FALSE DAWN (_The ’Forties_) BY EDITH WHARTON AUTHOR OF “THE AGE OF INNOCENCE,” ETC. DECORATIONS BY E. C. CASWELL [Illustration: colophon] D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK :: LONDON :: MCMXXIV COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY _Copyright, 1923, by The Curtis Publishing Company_ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FALSE DAWN (_The ’Forties_) PART I FALSE DAWN (_The ’Forties_) I Hay, verbena and mignonette scented the languid July day. Large strawberries, crimsoning through sprigs of mint, floated in a bowl of pale yellow cup on the verandah table: an old Georgian bowl, with complex reflections on polygonal flanks, engraved with the Raycie arms between lions’ heads. Now and again the gentlemen, warned by a menacing hum, slapped their cheeks, their brows or their bald crowns; but they did so as furtively as possible, for Mr. Halston Raycie, on whose verandah they sat, would not admit that there were mosquitoes at High Point. The strawberries came from Mr. Raycie’s kitchen garden; the Georgian bowl came from his great-grandfather (father of the Signer); the verandah was that of his country-house, which stood on a height above the Sound, at a convenient driving distance from his town house in Canal Street. “Another glass, Commodore,” said Mr. Raycie, shaking out a cambric handkerchief the size of a table-cloth, and applying a corner of it to his steaming brow.