It was the impression given in these latter moments that fixed upon her the suspicion that she was not quite what she ought to be.

The flowers bloomed where she walked, but there was dust on them.
The cup she handed to her friends was pure to the eye, but it had a muddy taste.

She was a whole woman in sympathy, power, beauty, and sensibility, and yet one felt that somewhere within she harbored a devil--a refined devil in its play, a gross one when it had the woman at unresisting advantage.
Next came the Schoonmakers, an elderly gentleman and his wife, who dined out a great deal, and lived on the ancient respectability of their family.

They talked much about "the old New Yorkers," and of the inroads and devastations of the parvenu.

They were thoroughly posted on old family estates and mansions, the intermarriages of the Dutch aristocracy, and the subject of heraldry.