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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: matter, and dining there with a Duke who was their
cousin was almost a religious solemnity. It pleased
Archer to think that only an old New Yorker could
perceive the shade of difference (to New York) between
being merely a Duke and being the van der Luydens'
Duke. New York took stray noblemen calmly, and
even (except in the Struthers set) with a certain distrustful
hauteur; but when they presented such credentials
as these they were received with an old-fashioned
cordiality that they would have been greatly mistaken in
ascribing solely to their standing in Debrett. It was for
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