Explore "Expiation" by Edith Wharton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"I CAN never," said Mrs. Fetherel, "hear the bell ring without a shudder."
Her unruffled aspect -- she was the kind of woman whose emotions never communicate themselves to her clothes -- and the conventional background of the New York drawing-room, with its pervading implication of an imminent tea-tray and of an atmosphere in which the social functions have become purely reflex, lent to her declaration a relief not lost on her cousin Mrs. Clinch, who, from the other side of the fireplace, agreed with a glance at the clock, that it _was_ the hour for bores.