They were precisely what she wanted to give an air of solidity to the cobweb glitter of her state.

And we can also see how necessary it was that she should ostentatiously visit Charlie Ferfola's wife, and speak of her as a darling creature, her particular friend, whom she was doing her very best to keep out of an early grave.
Charlie Ferrola said that the Van Astrachans were obtuse; and so, to a certain degree, they were.

In social matters they had a kind of confiding simplicity.

They were so much accustomed to regard positive morals in the light of immutable laws of Nature, that it would not have been easy to have made them understand that sliding scale of estimates which is in use nowadays.

They would probably have had but one word, and that a very disagreeable one, to designate a married woman who was in love with anybody but her husband.