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Matilda, tying and untying and then tying again the sleeves of a cashmere sweater she had tossed over her shoulders to protect herself from the icy blast of Maisie’s air conditioner, even though it was nearly winter outside. “When I was giving parties, when darling Sweetzer was still alive, and we still had the big apartment, I always had my secretary call my guests on the morning of the party and say, ‘Mrs. Clarke is wearing a long dress tonight,’ or, ‘Mrs. Clarke is wearing a short dress,’ so that all the women would be dressed alike. I mean, look at this woman. She looks like she’s going to the opening night of the opera in Istanbul.”
    “Rather hard to pinpoint her nationality,” said Gus, studying Mrs. Lupescu’s ample mouth and wide-apart eyes.
    “Oh, Peruvian, maybe,” said Matilda, giving it some thought. “Or Corsican, possibly, and maybe more than a tinge of Albanian tossed in. What Sweetzer used to call a mongrel.”
    “Pretty, though.”
    “Shows too much gum when she smiles. Ask Ezzie Fenwick about Mrs. Lupescu sometime. Ask Ezzie whatshe did at the airport in Tangier when she didn’t have enough money to pay for her excess baggage.” Matilda rolled her eyes. “Nice china Maisie Verdurin has,” she continued, picking up the dessert plate that had been placed in front of her and turning it over. “You don’t often see the Fitz Hugh border like this. Do you suppose it’s for sale? Like all her pictures?” A waiter passing the dessert interrupted her. “Oh, look at this
créme brûlée
, will you! It’s far too pretty to break into, but I will. A million calories, that’s all.”
    Across the table, Yvonne Lupescu, unrushed, stared down at Maisie’s
créme brûlée
for half a minute before tasting it and then, with a shake of her head, dropped her spoon loudly on her plate. “That’s not worth getting fat over,” she said to Bernie Slatkin.
    As a rule toasts were not given at Maisie Verdurin’s dinners, except when a former President was present, or a cabinet minister, so it was unexpected when Constantine de Rham rose to his feet, after the champagne was poured, and tapped his fork against the side of his champagne glass until there was silence in the three rooms where Maisie’s guests were seated.
    “I would like to propose a toast to our hostess,” said Constantine, and, encouraged by several “Hear, hears,” in the rooms, he spoke charmingly about Maisie as a formidable force in the art world of New York as well as a hostess of such note that her monthly fêtes would one day be recorded as part of the social history of the city. Maisie flushed prettily. “She has given her talent to her work,” Constantine concluded, “but she has given her genius to her life.”
    No one applauded more enthusiastically than Mrs. Lupescu, as if approval of Constantine de Rham was the thing she most ardently desired, reflecting, as it did, on herself.
    “Marvelous, wasn’t it, what Constantine said about Mrs. Verdurin?” said Yvonne Lupescu to her table. “That she gives her talent to her work but her genius to her life. Marvelous.”
    “It was even more marvelous when Oscar Wilde said it originally, about himself,” said Gus to Matilda Clarke.
    Throughout dinner, Ruby Renthal, terrified of the sophisticated society-wit Ezzie Fenwick, sat in silence and watched, declining to participate for fear of making another mistake. She understood from his remark that her dress was all wrong, as well as her hairstyle, just from the look he gave it with his one good eye, which she figured out was not the one that went off in another direction. And worse, her table manners, once she realized she was the only one who ate her artichoke with a knife and fork, were wrong. On the several occasions she tried to speak to Gus Bailey, she saw that his ear was monopolized by Matilda Clarke, whose apartment the Renthals had bought, but his eyes were focused on Yvonne Lupescu.
    When Gus went down the long