- The novel opens on a January evening in the early 1870s. All of New York society has gathered at the Academy of Music to hear Christine Nilsson sing in the opera Faust. Everyone who is anyone is there.
- Newland Archer arrives fashionably late and enters the club box in the middle of the garden scene. It's his fave.
- From where he stands, he can see old Mrs. Manson Mingott's box. Sitting there is Mrs. Lovell Mingott, Mrs. Welland, and a girl with a bouquet of lilies of the valley.
- Archer contemplates the girl with satisfaction; she is May Welland, and they have recently gotten engaged. She's a catch, for sure.
- In the club box, Lawrence Lefferts and Mr. Sillerton Jackson are astonished to see a woman enter Mrs. Mansott Mingott's box. Pass the opera glasses, please.