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The Van Astrachans, a proud, rich old family, who took a certain defined position in New-York life on account of some ancestral passages in their family history, had invited Rose to spend a month or two with them; and she was therefore moving as a star in a very high orbit. Now, these Van Astrachans were one of those cold, glittering, inaccessible pinnacles in Mrs.
This was what Charlie Ferrola meant when he said that the Van Astrachans were obtuse. They never could be brought to the niceties of moral perspective which show one exactly where to find the vanishing point for every duty.
Lillie's want of self-control, and imprudent conduct, had laid her open to reports in certain circles where such reports find easy credence; but these were circles with which the Van Astrachans never mingled. The only accidental point of contact was the intimacy of Rose with the Seymour family; and Rose was the last person to understand an allusion if she heard it.
"We'll take the red astrachans and sheepnoses to-day," John said. "Those trees over there are loaded, you see. Then there are the orange apples in the next row; they make good cider." The early apples were very plentiful, and it took scarcely any time to make up a load and start off for the cider mill.
Be that as it may, there, at any rate, she was, safe and sound; surrounded by people whom she had never met before, and receiving introductions to the right and left with the utmost graciousness. The arrangements for the evening had been made at the tea-table of the Van Astrachans with an innocent and trustful simplicity. "You know, dear," said Mrs.
Seymour's most intimate friends, was an unhoped-for stroke of good luck; because there was the necessity of calling on Rose, of taking her out to drive in the park, and of making a party on her account, from which, of course, the Van Astrachans could not stay away. It will be seen here that our friend, Mrs.
Charlie Ferrola said that the Van Astrachans were obtuse; and so, to a certain degree, they were. In social matters they had a kind of confiding simplicity. They were so much accustomed to regard positive morals in the light of immutable laws of Nature, that it would not have been easy to have made them understand that sliding scale of estimates which is in use nowadays.
The Van Astrachans were good old Dutch-Reformed Christians, unquestioning believers in the Bible in general, and the Ten Commandments in particular, persons whose moral constitutions had been nourished on the great stocky beefsteaks and sirloins of plain old truths which go to form English and Dutch nature.
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