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In the course of the next day the first of the usual betrothal visits were exchanged. The New York ritual was precise and inflexible in such matters; and in conformity with it Newland Archer first went with his mother and sister to call on Mrs. Welland, after which he and Mrs. Welland and May drove out to old Mrs. Manson Mingott's to receive that venerable ancestress's blessing.
第二天，進行了第一輪例行的訂婚互訪。在這類事情上，紐約的禮規(guī)一絲不茍，毫無變動可言。遵照這一禮節(jié)，紐蘭·阿切爾先與母親、妹妹一起去拜訪了韋蘭太太，然后再與韋蘭太太和梅乘車去曼森·明戈特老太太家接受這位尊敬的老祖宗的祝福。
A visit to Mrs. Manson Mingott was always an amusing episode to the young man. The house in itself was already an historic document, though not, of course, as venerable as certain other old family houses in University Place and lower Fifth Avenue. Those were of the purest 1830, with a grim harmony of cabbage- rose-garlanded carpets, rosewood consoles, round-arched fire-places with black marble mantels, and immense glazed book-cases of mahogany; whereas old Mrs. Mingott, who had built her house later, had bodily cast out the massive furniture of her prime, and mingled with the Mingott heirlooms the frivolous upholstery of the Second Empire. It was her habit to sit in a window of her sitting-room on the ground floor, as if watching calmly for life and fashion to flow northward to her solitary doors. She seemed in no hurry to have them come, for her patience was equalled by her confidence. She was sure that presently the hoardings, the quarries, the one-story saloons, the wooden green-houses in ragged gardens, and the rocks from which goats surveyed the scene, would vanish before the advance of residences as stately as her own--perhaps (for she was an impartial woman) even statelier; and that the cobble- stones over which the old clattering omnibuses bumped would be replaced by smooth asphalt, such as people reported having seen in Paris. Meanwhile, as every one she cared to see came to HER (and she could fill her rooms as easily as the Beauforts, and without adding a single item to the menu of her suppers), she did not suffer from her geographic isolation.
拜訪曼森·明戈特太太永遠是年輕人的一件樂事。那房子本身就是一個歷史的見證，盡管它自然不會像大學區(qū)與第五大街南部某些住宅那樣令人肅然起敬。那些住宅清一色是1830年建的，里面那些百葉薔該圖案的地毯、黃檀木的蝸形支腿桌案、黑大理石面飾的圓拱形壁爐，還有锃亮的紅木大書櫥，顯得既古板又協(xié)調(diào)。而明戈特老太太的住宅建得晚一些，她悉數(shù)擯棄了年輕時代那些笨重的家具，將第二帝國輕浮的室內(nèi)裝飾品與明戈特的傳家寶熔為一爐。她坐在一樓客廳的窗戶后面，仿佛是在安詳?shù)氐群蛑缃换顒优c時尚的潮流滾滾北上，流向她冷落的門坎。她看起來并不急于讓它們來到，因為她的耐心與她的信心不相上下。她深信那些囤積物與獵獲物，那些單層的廳房、荒蕪花園里的木制暖房以及山羊登臨的石基，不久就會隨著新住宅的推進而提前消逝，而那些新的宅邸將跟她的家一樣富麗堂皇 ——或許（她是個不帶偏見的女人）比她的更為壯觀。而且，那些老式公共馬車卡嗒卡嗒顛簸于其上的卵石路也將被平滑的柏油路面取代，就像人們傳聞在巴黎見過的那樣。同時，由于她樂于接見的人全都過來看她（她能像博福特夫婦那樣，輕而易舉把她家的客廳塞滿，而且無須往晚餐菜單里加一道菜），她也并不因為住處偏僻而受與世隔絕之苦。
The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plump active little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something as vast and august as a natural phenomenon. She had accepted this submergence as philosophically as all her other trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the centre of which the traces of a small face survived as if awaiting excavation. A flight of smooth double chins led down to the dizzy depths of a still-snowy bosom veiled in snowy muslins that were held in place by a miniature portrait of the late Mr. Mingott; and around and below, wave after wave of black silk surged away over the edges of a capacious armchair, with two tiny white hands poised like gulls on the surface of the billows.
脂肪的激增在她中年時期突然降臨，就像火山熔巖降臨一個行將覆沒的城市那樣兇猛，使她由一位豐滿好動、步伐靈活的小巧女人變成如自然奇觀般的龐然大物。她像對待其他一切磨難一樣達觀地接受了這一大災大難。如今，她在耄耋之年終于得到了報償：鏡子里的她，是一堆幾乎沒有皺紋的白里透紅的結(jié)實肌膚，在其中央，一張小小的面孔形跡猶存，仿佛在等待著挖掘；光溜溜的雙下巴下方，是掩映在雪白的麥斯林紗底下令人眩目的雪白的胸膛，一枚已故明戈特先生的微形像章固定其間；四周及以下部位，一波接一波的黑絲綢在大扶手椅的邊棱上流瀉而下，兩只雪白的小手擺在那里猶如海面上的兩只海鷗。
