The Age of Innocence

Archer goes to the Western Union telegram office to summon Ellen to New York at her grandmother’s request. There he meets Lawrence Lefferts, whose gossip associates Ellen’s name with Julius Beaufort’s misfortunes and the cause of Mrs. Mingott’s stroke.

Ellen telegrams, announcing her arrival in in Jersey City the following evening. As the Wellands debate who will receive Ellen, they blame her for again being an inconvenience and wonder whether Mrs. Mingott’s request to see this particular grandchild is reasonable or a marker of senility. Archer volunteers to receive Ellen, lying to May that the case in Washington has been postponed. May, however, knows that Letterblair is going to Washington for the case, catching Archer in his lie but pretending not to. When she sees him off, “her eyes [are] so blue that he wondered afterward if they had shone on him through tears” (Location 3650). 

Archer takes May’s brougham to meet Ellen in Jersey City. As he kisses her hand, they declare their love for each other. Ellen confesses that Olenski’s envoy is the secretary who rescued her from her husband the first time. A carriage lurch flings them together and they kiss. Archer cannot abide only furtive embraces between long absences; Ellen chastises him for coming in the first place.