Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence [854]

Madame Olenska stopped short and looked at the bouquet. Her color did not change, but a sort of white radiance of anger ran over her like summer lightning. “Ah,” she exclaimed, in a shrill voice that the young man had never heard, “who is ridiculous enough to send me a bouquet? Why a bouquet? And why tonight of all nights? I am not going to a ball; I am not a girl engaged to be married. But some people are always ridiculous.” — Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 854

Note

The ‘white radiance of anger’ running over her face ‘like summer lightning’ is a rare physiological register from Wharton — and it precedes the first shrillness Archer has ever heard from her. Her objection, ‘I am not a girl engaged to be married,’ names exactly what the flowers assume she is, making the bouquet an insult in the currency of courtship.