She had rarely been near Henry since then, and the sight of him now was like a concentrated dose.

Girls," their mother interjected, "you must both stop being strange - it is unattractive. And don't forget your hats. It would be absolutely the end for me if you two came down with freckles at a time like this.

You love her," Teddy observed quietly. Henry replied with an uncharacteristic lack of irony: "Yes." Teddy's eyes shifted to the plaster interlacing that decorated the ceiling in curlicues. "Lord, you never make it easy, do you." "No.

The value of secrets is ever fluctuating although ladies who have been in society for a long time learn that a secret kept can be worth more than a secret told.

She considered herself unconventional.

Instead, he sat in the parlor of his family's Fifth Avenue mansion, growing older by the minute just like everybody else.

So this is how life was, she thought with a faint smile: It wore you down until you emerged at its wildest, most unexpected ends.