Old Mrs. Mingott's foreign daughters had become a legend. They never came back to see their mother, and the latter being, like many persons of active mind and dominating will, sedentary and corpulent in her habit, had philosophically remained at home. But the cream- coloured house (supposed to be modelled on the private hotels of the Parisian aristocracy) was there as a visible proof of her moral courage; and she throned in it, among pre-Revolutionary furniture and souvenirs of the Tuileries of Louis Napoleon (where she had shone in her middle age), as placidly as if there were nothing peculiar in living above Thirty-fourth Street, or in having French windows that opened like doors instead of sashes that pushed up.
老明戈特太太的兩個外籍女兒成了一則神話故事。她們從不回來看望母親。母親依戀故土且身體肥胖，像許多思想活躍意志專橫的人那樣，一直達觀地留在家中，而那幢乳白色的房子（據說是仿照巴黎貴族的私人旅館建造的）卻成了她大無畏精神的見證。她在里面登上寶座，平靜地生活在獨立戰爭前的家具與路易·拿破侖杜伊勒利宮（她中年時曾在那兒大出風頭）的紀念品中間，仿佛住在34街以北、用開得像門一樣大的法式窗戶代替推拉式吊窗絲毫不足為怪似的。

Every one (including Mr. Sillerton Jackson) was agreed that old Catherine had never had beauty--a gift which, in the eyes of New York, justified every success, and excused a certain number of failings. Unkind people said that, like her Imperial namesake, she had won her way to success by strength of will and hardness of heart, and a kind of haughty effrontery that was somehow justified by the extreme decency and dignity of her private life. Mr. Manson Mingott had died when she was only twenty-eight, and had "tied up" the money with an additional caution born of the general distrust of the Spicers; but his bold young widow went her way fearlessly, mingled freely in foreign society, married her daughters in heaven knew what corrupt and fashionable circles, hobnobbed with Dukes and Ambassadors, associated familiarly with Papists, entertained Opera singers, and was the intimate friend of Mme. Taglioni; and all the while (as Sillerton Jackson was the first to proclaim) there had never been a breath on her reputation; the only respect, he always added, in which she differed from the earlier Catherine.
人人（包括西勒頓·杰克遜先生）都一致認為，老凱瑟琳從沒擁有過美貌，而在紐約人眼中，美貌是成功的保證，也可作為某些失敗的借口。不友善的人們說，像她那位大英帝國的同名女人一樣，她獲得成功靠的是意志力量與冷酷心腸，外加一種由于私生活絕對正派而使她在一定程度上免遭非議的傲慢。曼森·明戈特先生去世的時候她只有28歲。出于對斯派塞家族的不信任，他用一條附加條款“凍結”了自己的遺產。他那位年輕、果敢的遺孀大無畏地走著自己的路，她無拘無束地混跡在外國的社交界，把女兒嫁到天知道何等腐化時髦的圈子里，與公爵大使們開懷暢飲，與教皇政治家親密交往，款待歌劇演員，并做了芭蕾名門之后塔戈里奧尼夫人的密友。與此同時（正如西勒頓·杰克遜首先宣布的），關于她的名聲卻從沒有一句口舌。這是她惟一一點，他總是接著說，與以前那位凱瑟琳的不同之處。

Mrs. Manson Mingott had long since succeeded in untying her husband's fortune, and had lived in affluence for half a century; but memories of her early straits had made her excessively thrifty, and though, when she bought a dress or a piece of furniture, she took care that it should be of the best, she could not bring herself to spend much on the transient pleasures of the table. Therefore, for totally different reasons, her food was as poor as Mrs. Archer's, and her wines did nothing to redeem it. Her relatives considered that the penury of her table discredited the Mingott name, which had always been associated with good living; but people continued to come to her in spite of the "made dishes" and flat champagne, and in reply to the remonstrances of her son Lovell (who tried to retrieve the family credit by having the best chef in New York) she used to say laughingly: "What's the use of two good cooks in one family, now that I've married the girls and can't eat sauces?"
曼森·明戈特太太早已解凍了丈夫的財產，并殷殷實實地活了半個世紀。早年困境的記憶使她格外節儉，雖然她在買衣服或添置家具時總是關照要最好的，但卻舍不得為餐桌上瞬間的享樂過多破費。所以，由于完全不同的原因，她的飯菜跟阿切爾太太家一樣差，她的酒也不能為之增光添彩。親戚們認為，她餐桌上的吝嗇損害了明戈特家的名譽——它一向是與吃喝講究連在一起的。然而人們還是不顧那些“拼盤”與走味的香擯，繼續到她家來。針對她兒子洛弗爾的勸告（他企圖雇傭紐約最好的廚師以恢復家族的名譽），她常常笑著說：“既然姑娘們都嫁出去了，我又不能用調味品，一個家庭用兩個好廚師還有什么用？”

Newland Archer, as he mused on these things, had once more turned his eyes toward the Mingott box. He saw that Mrs. Welland and her sister-in-law were facing their semicircle of critics with the Mingottian APLOMB which old Catherine had inculcated in all her tribe, and that only May Welland betrayed, by a heightened colour (perhaps due to the knowledge that he was watching her) a sense of the gravity of the situation. As for the cause of the commotion, she sat gracefully in her corner of the box, her eyes fixed on the stage, and revealing, as she leaned forward, a little more shoulder and bosom than New York was accustomed to seeing, at least in ladies who had reasons for wishing to pass unnoticed.
紐蘭·阿切爾一面沉思著這些事情，又把目光轉向了明戈特包廂。他見韋蘭太太與她的嫂嫂正帶著老凱瑟琳向族人灌輸的那種明戈特家特有的自恃面對著組成半圓形的批評者。只有梅·韋蘭面色緋紅（也許由于知道他在看她），流露出事態嚴峻的意味。至于引起騷動的那一位，依然優雅地坐在包廂角落里，兩眼凝視著舞臺。由于身體前傾，她肩膀和胸部露得比紐約社會習慣看到的稍稍多了一點，至少在那些有理由希望不引起注意的女士們中間是如此。