_OLD NEW YORK_ THE OLD MAID (_The ’Fifties_) _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 THE OLD MAID (_The ’Fifties_) 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, 1922, by The Consolidated Magazines Corporation_ (_The Red Book Magazine_) PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA THE OLD MAID (_The ’Fifties_) PART I THE OLD MAID (_The ’Fifties_) I In the old New York of the ’fifties a few families ruled, in simplicity and affluence. Of these were the Ralstons. The sturdy English and the rubicund and heavier Dutch had mingled to produce a prosperous, prudent and yet lavish society. To “do things handsomely” had always been a fundamental principle in this cautious world, built up on the fortunes of bankers, India merchants, shipbuilders and ship-chandlers. Those well-fed slow-moving people, who seemed irritable and dyspeptic to European eyes only because the caprices of the climate had stripped them of superfluous flesh, and strung their nerves a little tighter, lived in a genteel monotony of which the surface was never stirred by the dumb dramas now and then enacted underground. Sensitive souls in those days were like muted key-boards, on which Fate played without a sound.