The Count's Desperate Plea — The Age of Innocence

Ellen Olenska has called on Mrs Archer while Newland was away, wearing a black velvet polonaise and a tiny green monkey muff, and Janey reports every button. Mrs Archer keeps her eyes on her plate. She allows only that the Countess lays herself out to please, even when calling on an old lady, and that dear May is her ideal. Nobody at the table mentions why Ellen came. Archer learns that later, from Ellen herself: she wanted to know where he had gone, because he never answered her note.

She tells him in front of her grandmother. Mrs Manson Mingott has just mocked the Mingotts as born in a rut, asked Archer why in the world he did not marry her little Ellen, and declared, with cold complacency, that Ellen's life is finished. Ellen arrives bright and gay, teases him for forgetting her in Florida, and then gently offers to help persuade the Wellands to an earlier wedding. Under the old woman's malicious eye, Archer cannot even thank her for visiting his mother. He asks only when he may see her. Tomorrow, she says, but early, because she is going out.

He plans to arrive late and spoil her evening at Mrs Struthers's, where Beaufort is sure to be, yet restlessness brings him to her door by half past eight. In the hall hang a shaggy yellow ulster and a vast cloak that smells of sawdust. By the fire stand Ned Winsett, the prophet Dr Agathon Carver and Ellen's aunt Medora Manson, all gazing at a huge bouquet of crimson roses on Ellen's sofa. When the men have gone, Medora whispers behind her ivory fan that Count Olenski wants his wife back, and that she has his letter. She lists the gardens at Nice, the Sobieski emeralds, the nine portraits. Archer cries that he would rather see Ellen dead. Medora hears her niece on the stairs, points at the roses, and asks whether he prefers that. The door is about to open on the question.