Seemingly happy in his comfortable, if repressive, world of upper class New York, Newland Archer finds himself questioning all his carefully cherished assumptions about life when he meets his fiancee's cousin, the mysterious, non-conformist Countess Olenska.

"A ravishing romance about three wealthy New Yorkers caught in a tragic love triangle, the ironically-titled story chronicles the grandeur and hypocrisy of high society in the 1870's"--Container.