It was impossible to believe that she had herself ever been a focus of activities.

The most vivid thing about her was the fact that her grandmother had been a Van Alstyne.

This connection with the well-fed and industrious stock of early New York revealed itself in the glacial neatness of Mrs.Peniston's drawing-room and in the excellence of her cuisine.

She belonged to the class of old New Yorkers who have always lived well, dressed expensively, and done little else; and to these inherited obligations Mrs.Peniston faithfully conformed.

She had always been a looker-on at life, and her mind resembled one of those little mirrors which her Dutch ancestors were accustomed to affix to their upper windows, so that from the depths of an impenetrable domesticity they might see what was happening in the street.
Mrs.Peniston was the owner of a country-place in New Jersey, but she had never lived there since her husband's death--a remote event, which appeared to dwell in her memory chiefly as a dividing point in the personal reminiscences that formed the staple of her conversation.