In what way is the story wry?

Wharton is able to preserve a wry treatment of the subject
of divorce. Ironically, then, Alice forgets how Waythorn takes his coffee, and thus puts
cognac into it for him, in the way that Varick prefers his (paragraph 72). To avoid
embarrassing Waythorn, Alice lies by denying that she had seen Haskett when he first
comes to see Lily, her daughter. Wharton has Waythorn think of Alice as being “ ‘as easy
as an old shoe’—a shoe that too many feet had worn”—a domestic image that is comically
reductive as it also points out that divorced people do not lose their humanity just
because they get divorced (paragraph 143). Life itself overtakes custom because people
themselves have common interests. Thus, Waythorn deals with Varick in an important
financial venture that will be profitable not only to Varick but to Waythorn’s firm.
Haskett complains to Waythorn about Lily’s governess, a matter of household employment
in the Waythorn residence that Haskett has a concern in because of his interest in Lily.
Life goes on.