Wharton makes light of the cyclical nature of the financial markets by comparing Wall Street to playing Cinderella. Rosedale's nouveau-riche status is emphasized by his purchasing the estate of a family ruined by the stock market crash. The narrator further uses Rosedale's Jewish heritage to disparage him: "The instincts of his race fitted him to suffer rebuffs and put up with delays."
Mrs. Peniston is parodied as a slave to social custom when the reader learns that the veracity of Grace's accusations are not as important as the fact that the accusations are being made in the first place: "It was horrible for a young girl to let herself be talked about; however unfounded the charges against her, she must be to blame for their having been made." In such a closed culture, all individuals are guilty until proven otherwise.
The tableau vivant presented by Lily reveals her as a truly beautiful woman, capable of enchanting most men. When Selden approaches Lily following the display, she feels "the quicker beat of life that his nearness always produced . . . [For] the moment it seemed to her that it was for him only she cared to be beautiful." Her love for Selden, however, does not fit her designs for herself, and she leaves him after their kiss.
Trenor delivers the last lines of Chapter XII. First, he complains that Lily's tableau was too revealing of her figure, and, second, he insults the nouveau riche hosts of the party: "My wife was dead right to stay away: she says life's too short to spend it in breaking in new people."
