Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence [1406]

New York was inexorable in its condemnation of business irregularities. So far there had been no exception to its tacit rule that those who broke the law of probity must pay; and everyone was aware that even Beaufort and Beaufort’s wife would be offered up unflinchingly to this principle. But to be obliged to offer them up would be not only painful but inconvenient. The disappearance of the Beauforts would leave a considerable void in their compact little circle; and those who were too ignorant or too careless to shudder at the moral catastrophe bewailed in advance the loss of the best ball-room in New York. — Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 1406

Note

The passage holds relentless moral rigidity and self-interested convenience in one ironic sentence — the community will ‘offer up’ the Beauforts not from cruelty but because it must, yet regrets the loss of the best ball-room. The scruple and the ball-room in the same breath is the satiric point.