Henry shook his head, 'I was drunk,' he said, trying to sound both ashamed and firm in this belief. He remembered the rosebush incident very clearly, of course, but he knew that sneaking into the bedroom window of his fiancee's little sister wasn't something he wanted to explain to his father. Sometimes, Henry reflected, being taken for a perpetual drunk was sort of convenient.

THE LUXE IS . . . Pretty girls in pretty dresses, partying until dawn. Irresistible boys with mischievous smiles and dangerous intentions. White lies, dark secrets, and scandalous hookups. This is Manhattan in 1899.

Henry was thinking of the younger Holland sister of the way she could go from being an impetuous girl to a knowing woman in a few seconds and never lose the stars in her eyes.

Good girls hold their heads high by daylight, Their grace and their virtue soaring with kites, While bad girls slink along in their shame- Everyone stares at them, everyone blames. But those bad girls sleep soundly at night, Ne'er do their consciences wake them in a fright, While our good girls toss and they turn- They lay awake for those who will burn.

It is well known that a man, when wooing a lady to be his wife, must first win over the females she most confides in—her friends, of course, and her sister, if she has one.

Though her emotions had not deviated from a jittery frailty she knew that in her own room she could at least attempt sleep and that if she dreamed she might then finally be with Henry.

They were a society whose chief vocations were to entertain and be entertained.