Lily Bart misses her train to Bellomont and impulsively visits Lawrence Selden's apartment at the Benedick for tea.

Lily invents a story about visiting her dressmaker when Rosedale catches her leaving Selden's bachelor apartment building.

Lily stages a chance encounter with wealthy Percy Gryce on the train to Bellomont, flattering his book-collecting interests.

Bertha Dorset tells Percy about Lily's gambling debts, causing him to leave Bellomont without proposing to Lily.

Lily asks Gus Trenor to invest a small sum of her money in the stock market on her behalf.

The char-woman Mrs. Haffen visits Lily at home and attempts blackmail using pieced-together letters found in Selden's rooms.

Lily purchases the love letters from Mrs. Haffen to protect Selden's reputation, intending to destroy them.

Gus Trenor tricks Lily into coming to his empty townhouse at night and demands physical intimacy as repayment.

Bertha Dorset publicly refuses to let Lily return to the Dorsets' yacht after a dinner party in France.

Mrs. Peniston's will is read, leaving most of her estate to Grace Stepney and only $10,000 to Lily.

Judy Trenor publicly snubs Lily at a restaurant, signaling that all of high society will follow her lead.

Lily is fired from Mme. Regina's fashionable millinery after two months of incompetent hat-sewing work.

Lily burns Bertha's love letters in Selden's fireplace without revealing what she has dropped into the flames.

Lily's $10,000 legacy arrives and she immediately writes a check to repay Gus Trenor, settling all her remaining debts.

Lily fatally overdoses on chloral in her boarding house room after increasing the dosage to ease her sleeplessness.

Lily Bart, a beautiful but financially precarious socialite, pursues a wealthy marriage to secure her place in New York high society. A series of impulsive choices—visiting Selden's apartment, enlisting Gus Trenor's financial help, and purchasing compromising letters—each carry consequences she cannot foresee. Bertha Dorset emerges as her most dangerous enemy, systematically destroying Lily's reputation and marriage prospects at every turn. Disinherited by her aunt and rejected by the friends she depended upon, Lily falls steadily down the social ladder toward poverty and manual labor. Despite her desperate circumstances, Lily makes a crucial moral choice: she destroys the letters that could have saved her and uses her final inheritance to settle the debt that haunted her conscience. Her nobility goes unwitnessed, and she dies alone, leaving only the evidence of her integrity for Selden to find the following morning.

Lily Bart's ambition, social ruin, and tragic death.

Lily abandons her plan to walk with Percy Gryce and spends Sunday afternoon at Bellomont with Selden instead.

Lily's father comes home early to announce financial ruin and soon dies, leaving Lily dependent on wealthy relatives.

Lily accepts an invitation to the Wellington Brys' Thanksgiving party in the Adirondacks, gaining renewed confidence in her social power.

Lily receives her first large check from Gus Trenor and spends it freely without questioning where the money came from.

Percy Gryce's secret engagement to Evie Van Osburgh is announced to Lily at Jack Stepney's society wedding.

Grace Stepney reports gossip about Lily's association with Gus Trenor to Mrs. Peniston, damaging Lily's standing with her aunt.

Lily gives a stunning tableau vivant performance at the Wellington Brys' party, earning admiration from the assembled crowd.

Lily and Selden share a brief kiss in the darkened garden at the Brys' party after her triumphant performance.

Bertha Dorset invites Lily to join the Dorsets' Mediterranean cruise aboard the Sabrina to use her as a social distraction.

Lily returns from Europe to find that her aunt Mrs. Peniston has suddenly died.

Carry Fisher arranges for Lily to take a position as social guide for the wealthy and disreputable Mrs. Norma Hatch.

Selden visits Lily at Mrs. Hatch's hotel and firmly insists she leave the unsuitable and disreputable position.

Lily flees Mrs. Hatch's employ upon discovering a scheme to arrange young heir Freddy Van Osburgh's unsuitable marriage.

An exhausted Lily encounters former charity recipient Nettie Struther on a park bench and is welcomed into her tenement home.

Selden opens Lily's checkbook and discovers she spent her entire legacy repaying Gus Trenor rather than saving herself.

Behind the headline events of Lily's story lie smaller but equally significant moments that shaped her fate. Her upbringing—trained by a ruinous mother to prize luxury above all else—set the trajectory of her life long before the novel begins, and at Bellomont she chose an afternoon with Selden over securing Percy Gryce, revealing the inner conflict that would undo her plans. The checks from Gus Trenor provided temporary relief but deepened her dependence, while Grace Stepney's poisonous gossip quietly destroyed her inheritance. A brilliant triumph at the Brys' tableaux vivants and a stolen kiss with Selden represented the height of Lily's social and romantic power—a height she could not sustain. Her long slide through increasingly disreputable employment, from Mrs. Hatch's hotel world to the millinery workroom, shows how each compromise hardened her without saving her. A chance encounter with the thriving Nettie Struther near the end reminded Lily what a grounded life might have looked like, even as that life was already beyond her reach.

The pivotal secondary moments that shaped Lily's descent.

Lily and Selden share a romantic afternoon walk at Bellomont, each stopping just short of openly declaring love.

Gerty Farish realizes over dinner with Selden that he is in love with Lily, not herself, and feels the loss.

Selden and Ned Van Alstyne see Lily silhouetted in the doorway of Gus Trenor's townhouse late at night.

Lily reads in the evening newspaper that Selden has sailed for the West Indies without keeping his appointment.

Rosedale proposes marriage to Lily, promising to spend millions on her; she tells him she needs time to think.

Selden unexpectedly encounters Lily and the Dorset party in Monte Carlo and recognizes desperation beneath her polished social manner.

Bertha Dorset stays out all night with Ned Silverton during the cruise, forcing an open marital crisis with George.

Bertha reverses the blame onto Lily, accusing her of scandalously staying out late with George Dorset to cover her own affair.

Lily learns that her aunt altered the will only six weeks before dying, prompted by news of the Mediterranean scandal.

Carry Fisher tells Lily that marrying Rosedale is her only viable protection against Bertha's continuing social attacks.

George Dorset seeks out Lily at the Gormers' Long Island estate and pleads for evidence to use in divorcing Bertha.

Rosedale rejects Lily's attempt to accept his previous marriage proposal, saying her damaged reputation would hinder his social ambitions.

Rosedale urges Lily to use Bertha's love letters to blackmail her into withdrawing her slander and restoring Lily's reputation.

Lily sets out with Bertha's letters toward Bertha's home but experiences a sudden moral epiphany and visits Selden instead.

Selden arrives at Lily's boarding house the next morning intending to propose marriage, only to find her already dead.

The House of Mirth is shaped by a chain of decisive moments, each of which closes a door that will never reopen for Lily Bart. At Bellomont, a romantic walk and a near-confession of love between Lily and Selden represents the road not taken; when Selden later witnesses her leaving Gus's townhouse, his resulting flight ends their last real chance at that time. Bertha Dorset's calculated treachery on the Mediterranean cruise—staying out all night with Ned Silverton and then falsely blaming Lily for the scandal—sets off the final chain of Lily's social destruction. Returned to America and disinherited, Lily faces a succession of closed doors: Rosedale rejects her renewed overture, and the only escape offered is the moral compromise of blackmail. Lily's refusal to destroy Bertha with the letters—choosing Selden's fireplace and her own conscience over revenge—is the novel's central moral turning point. Selden arrives the next morning too late to speak the words he finally found, and their story ends in silence.