1 Well, I should want my wife to be able to take the earth for granted if she wanted to.
2 I was wondering if I should be able to have a word with you before the special snatches us away.
3 She would be able to arrange her life as she pleased, to soar into that empyrean of security where creditors cannot penetrate.
4 She admired him most of all, perhaps, for being able to convey as distinct a sense of superiority as the richest man she had ever met.
5 She had the art of giving self-confidence to the embarrassed, but she was not equally sure of being able to embarrass the self-confident.
6 One was from Mrs. Trenor, who announced that she was coming to town that afternoon for a flying visit, and hoped Miss Bart would be able to dine with her.
7 Even under the most adverse conditions, that pleasure always made itself felt: she might hate him, but she had never been able to wish him out of the room.
8 A world in which such things could be seemed a miserable place to Lily Bart; but then she had never been able to understand the laws of a universe which was so ready to leave her out of its calculations.
9 The system might at first necessitate a resort to some of the very shifts and expedients from which she intended it should free her; but she felt sure that in a short time she would be able to play the game in her own way.
10 The shock of dismay with which, on the dock, she had heard from Gerty Farish of Mrs. Peniston's sudden death, had been mitigated, almost at once, by the irrepressible thought that now, at last, she would be able to pay her debts.
11 Already she felt within her a stealing allegiance to their standards, an acceptance of their limitations, a disbelief in the things they did not believe in, a contemptuous pity for the people who were not able to live as they lived.
12 Mrs. Trenor, as it chanced, had placed the husband and wife on opposite sides of the table, and Lily was therefore able to observe Mrs. Dorset also, and by carrying her glance a few feet farther, to set up a rapid comparison between Lawrence Selden and Mr. Gryce.