Newport had been chosen for good reason. As the British and French had discovered in centuries past, its harbor was deep, sheltered and magnificent. The New York Yacht Club, which now trounced Britain’s elite Royal Yacht Squadron in the America’s Cup every year, had its home there. Newport’s many miles of unspoiled shoreline provided space for all the cottages that society might need—indeed, more than enough, for Newport society was exclusive. Once one belonged in Newport society, one had reached the top.

Naturally, presence was required. A couple of years ago, when her husband had taken her to London for the season, she had still insisted that she be back in Newport by the second week in July. Of course, with dozens of American heiresses already married into the English aristocracy, and a regular American colony now enjoying the British capital, some fashionable folk—the “steamer set”—preferred to winter in New York and summer in London. But Rose liked to be seen in Newport. “Otherwise,” she informed her husband, “people might think we’ve fallen off the end of the Earth.”

Newport was perfect for the summer. The problem was New York.

The family was well represented in the city. William’s grandmother, old Hetty Master, was still in isolated splendor at Gramercy Park. His father Tom had recently bought the late Mr. Sean O’Donnell’s splendid house on Lower Fifth, after he died on a return voyage from England. And for the last few years, William and Rose had been renting a fine place, further up the avenue. But now the owner wanted it back, and it was time to buy a place of their own.

“You’d better decide where we go, Rose,” William had genially remarked. “Brooklyn or Queens, Manhattan or the Bronx. Staten Island if you like. So long as it’s in the city.”

Technically, of course, all the outlandish places he mentioned were part of the city now. Just before the new century began, these surrounding areas—Brooklyn and Queens County on Long Island, part of the old Dutch Bronx estate above Manhattan to the north, and rural Staten Island across the harbor to the south—had all been incorporated within the expanded City of New York. Brooklyn, proudly independent, had only just been persuaded to join. But the resulting Five Boroughs of New York made the metropolis, after London, the most populous city in the world.

And there were splendid houses, and pleasant parks, and delightful open country in any one of those five boroughs. But Rose Master wasn’t free to choose them. The family could only live in Manhattan, and not in many places there.