title: Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth: A Casebook (Casebooks in Criticism)
author:  Carol J. Singley 
description: <br><strong>Carol J. Singley</strong> is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University-Camden. She is a past president of the Edith Wharton Society and editor of <em>A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton</em>.<br>
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  # The Other Two
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Edith Wharton
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
  I
  
  
  II
  
  
  III
  
  
  IV
  
  
  V
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ###  I
  
  
  
  
  
    
  WAYTHORN, on the drawing-room hearth, waited for his wife to come
  
  
  down to dinner.
  
  
    
  It was their first night under his own roof, and he was surprised
  
  
  at his thrill of boyish agitation. He was not so old, to be sure — his
  
  
  glass gave him little more than the five-and-thirty years to which his
  
  
  wife confessed — but he had fancied himself already in the temperate
  
  
  zone; yet here he was listening for her step with a tender sense of all
  
  
  it symbolized, with some old trail of verse about the garlanded nuptial
  
  
  door-posts floating through his enjoyment of the pleasant room and the
  
  
  good dinner just beyond it.
  
  
    
  They had been hastily recalled from their honeymoon by the illness
  
  
  of Lily Haskett, the child of Mrs. Waythorn's first marriage. The
  
  
  little girl, at Wayth