In the centre of this enchanted garden Madame Nilsson, in white cashmere slashed with pale blue satin, a reticule dangling from a blue girdle, and large yellow braids carefully disposed on each side of her muslin chemisette, listened with downcast eyes to M. Capoul's impassioned wooing, and affected a guileless incomprehension of his designs whenever, by word or glance, he persuasively indicated the ground floor window of the neat brick villa projecting obliquely from the right wing.
在這座魔幻般的花園中心，尼爾森夫人身穿鑲淡藍色緞子切口的白色開司米外衣，一個網狀手提包吊在藍腰帶上晃來晃去，一條寬大的黃色織帶精心地排列在她那件細棉緊身胸衣的兩側。她低垂著眼睛傾聽卡布爾熱烈的求愛，每當他用話語或目光勸誘她去從右側斜伸出來的那座整潔的磚造別墅一樓的窗口時，她都裝出一副對他的意圖毫不理解的天真的樣子。

"The darling!" thought Newland Archer, his glance flitting back to the young girl with the lilies-of-the- valley. "She doesn't even guess what it's all about." And he contemplated her absorbed young face with a thrill of possessorship in which pride in his own masculine initiation was mingled with a tender reverence for her abysmal purity. "We'll read Faust together . . . by the Italian lakes . . ." he thought, somewhat hazily confusing the scene of his projected honey-moon with the masterpieces of literature which it would be his manly privilege to reveal to his bride. It was only that afternoon that May Welland had let him guess that she "cared" (New York's consecrated phrase of maiden avowal), and already his imagination, leaping ahead of the engagement ring, the betrothal kiss and the march from Lohengrin, pictured her at his side in some scene of old European witchery.
“親愛的！”紐蘭·阿切爾心里想。他的目光迅速回到那位手持鈴蘭的年輕姑娘身上。“她連一點兒也看不懂啊。”他注視著她全”神貫注的稚嫩面龐，心中不由涌出一陣擁有者的激動，其中有對自己萌動的丈夫氣概的自豪，也有對她那深不可測的純潔的溫馨敬意。“我們將在一起讀《浮士德》，……在意大利的湖畔……”他心想，迷迷糊糊地把自己設計的蜜月場面與文學名著攪在一起。向自己的新娘闡釋名著似乎是他做丈夫的特權。僅僅在今天下午，梅·韋蘭才讓他猜出她對他感到 “中意”（紐約人尊崇的未婚少女認可的用語），而他的想象卻早已躍過了訂婚戒指、訂婚之吻以及走出盧亨格林教堂的婚禮行列，構畫起古老歐洲某個令人心醉的場景中她偎依在他身旁的情景了。

He did not in the least wish the future Mrs. Newland Archer to be a simpleton. He meant her (thanks to his enlightening companionship) to develop a social tact and readiness of wit enabling her to hold her own with the most popular married women of the "younger set," in which it was the recognised custom to attract masculine homage while playfully discouraging it. If he had probed to the bottom of his vanity (as he sometimes nearly did) he would have found there the wish that his wife should be as worldly-wise and as eager to please as the married lady whose charms had held his fancy through two mildly agitated years; without, of course, any hint of the frailty which had so nearly marred that unhappy being's life, and had disarranged his own plans for a whole winter.
他決不希望未來的紐蘭·阿切爾太太是個呆子。他要讓她（由于他朝夕相伴的啟蒙）養成一種圓通的社交能力，隨機應變的口才，能與“年輕一代”那些最有名氣的已婚女子平起平坐。在那些人中間，一條公認的習俗是，既要賣弄風情，引起男人的熱情，同時又要裝聾作啞，不讓他們得寸進尺。假如他早一些對他的虛榮心進行深入的探索（有時候他幾乎已經做到了），他可能早已發現那兒有個潛藏的愿望：希望自己的妻子跟那些已婚女士一樣地世故圓通，一樣地渴望取悅他人。那些太太們的嫵媚曾使他心醉神迷，讓他度過了兩個稍顯焦慮的年頭——當然，他沒露出一丁點脆弱的影子，盡管那險些毀了他這位不幸者的終生，并且整整一個冬天攪亂了他的計劃。