Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence [218]

New York society was, in those days, far too small, and too scant in its resources, for every one in it (including livery-stable keepers, butlers and cooks) not to know exactly on which evenings people were free; and it was thus possible for the recipients of Mrs. Lovell Mingott’s invitations to make cruelly clear their determination not to meet the Countess Olenska. — Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 218

Note

The devastating parenthesis — the servants too know everyone’s calendar — turns ostracism into a fully public act. The ‘cruelly clear’ refusal that omits the politeness of a ‘previous engagement’ is a collective sanction executed through pure information.