(1) Newland Archer, during this brief episode, had been thrown into a strange

游客2023-11-28 33

问题 (1) Newland Archer, during this brief episode, had been thrown into a strange state of embarrassment.
(2) It was annoying that the box which was thus attracting the undivided attention of masculine New York should be that in which his betrothed (未婚妻) was seated between her mother and aunt; and for a moment he could not identify the lady in the Empire dress, nor imagine why her presence created such excitement among the initiated. Then light dawned on him, and with it came a momentary rush of indignation (愤怒). No, indeed; no one would have thought the Mingotts would have tried it on!
(3) But they had; they undoubtedly had; for the low-toned comments behind him left no doubt in Archer’s mind that the young woman was May Welland’s cousin, the cousin always referred to in the family as "poor Ellen Olenska. " Archer knew that she had suddenly arrived from Europe a day or two previously; he had even heard from Miss Welland (not disapprovingly) that she had been to see poor Ellen, who was staying with old Mrs. Mingott. Archer entirely approved of family solidarity (团结), and one of the qualities he most admired in the Mingotts was their resolute championship of the few black sheep that their blameless stock had produced. There was nothing mean or ungenerous in the young man’s heart, and he was glad that his future wife should not be restrained by false prudery (假正经) from being kind (in private) to her unhappy cousin; but to receive Countess Olenska in the family circle was a different thing from producing her in public, at the Opera of all places, and in the very box with the young girl whose engagement to him, Newland Archer, was to be announced within a few weeks. No, he felt as old Sillerton Jackson felt; he did not think the Mingotts would have tried it on!
(4) He knew, of course, that whatever man dared (within Fifth Avenue’s limits) that old Mrs. Manson Mingott, the Matriarch (女族长) of the line, would dare. He had always admired the high and mighty old lady, who, in spite of having been only Catherine Spicer of Staten Island, with a father mysteriously discredited, and neither money nor position enough to make people forget it, had allied herself with the head of the wealthy Mingott line, married two of her daughters to "foreigners" (an Italian marquis and an English banker), and put the crowning touch to her audacities by building a large house of pale cream-coloured stone (when brown sandstone seemed as much the only wear as a frock-coat in the afternoon) in an inaccessible wilderness near the Central Park.
(5) 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 (久坐不动的) 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 (纪念品) 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.
(6) 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 (厚颜无耻) 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 (教皇信徒者) , 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.
(7) 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 (规劝) 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?"
(8) 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 (泰然自若) 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 (骚动), 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. [br] Newland Archer was engaged with______.

选项 A、May Welland
B、Ellen Olenska
C、the poor cousin
D、Mrs. Manson Mingott’s daughter

答案 A

解析推断题。文章第三段第一句的第三个分句指出包厢里的另一位年轻女士是梅-韦兰的表姐，她一直被家里人称作“可怜的埃伦-奥兰斯卡”。第二句的第二个分句提到纽兰-阿切尔听韦兰小姐说过，她已经去看过可怜的埃伦了。紧接着第四句的第一个分句则表明阿切尔对此事的态度，他很高兴自己未来的妻子没有受到假正经的局限，能私下善待她不幸的表姐，由此可知，纽兰-阿切尔的未婚妻就是梅-韦兰，故[A]为正确答案。[B]和[C]指的是同一个人，都是梅-韦兰的表姐，故均排除；第四段第二句提到曼森-明戈特太太把自己的两个女儿都嫁给了“外国人”(一个意大利侯爵，一个英国银行家)，故排除[D]。

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