uneasiness, listening with considerable interest to her account of the circumstances under which Miss Tarrant was visiting New York. After a moment, as the result of some private reflexion, he propounded this question: 'Is the son of the lady of the house a handsome young man, very polite, in a white vest?'
'I don't know the colour of his vest—but he has a kind of fawning manner. Verena judges from that that he is in love with her.'
'Perhaps he is,' said Ransom. 'You say it was his idea to get her to come on.'
'Oh, he likes to flirt; that is highly probable.'
'Perhaps she has brought him round.'
'Not to where she wants, I think. The property is very large; he will have it all one of these days.'
'Do you mean she wishes to impose on him the yoke of matrimony?' Ransom asked, with Southern languor.
'I believe she thinks matrimony an exploded superstition; but there is here and there a case in which it is still the best thing; when the gentleman's name happens to be Burrage and the young lady's Tarrant. I don't admire 'Burrage' so much myself. But I think she would have captured this present scion if it hadn't been for Olive. Olive stands between them—she wants to keep her in the single sisterhood; to keep her, above all, for herself. Of course she won't listen to her marrying, and she has put a spoke in the wheel. She has brought her to New York; that may seem against what I say; but the girl pulls hard, she has to humour her, to give her her head sometimes, to throw something overboard, in short, to save the rest. You may say, as regards Mr. Burrage, that it's a queer taste in a gentleman; but there is no arguing about that. It's queer taste in a lady, too; for she is a lady, poor Olive. You can see that to-night. She is dressed like a book-agent, but she is more distinguished than any one here. Verena, beside her, looks like a walking advertisement.'
When Mrs. Luna paused, Basil Ransom became aware that, in the other room, Verena's address had begun; the sound of her clear, bright, ringing voice, an admirable voice for public uses, came to them from the distance. His eagerness to stand where he could hear her better, and see her into the bargain, made him start in his place, and this movement produced an outgush of mocking laughter on the part of his companion. But she didn't say—'Go, go, deluded man, I take pity on you!' she only remarked, with light impertinence, that he surely wouldn't be so wanting in gallantry as to leave a lady absolutely alone in a public place—it was so Mrs. Luna was pleased to qualify Mrs. Burrage's drawing-room—in the face of her entreaty that he would remain with her. She had the better of poor Ransom, thanks to the superstitions of Mississippi. It was in his simple code a gross rudeness to withdraw from conversation with a lady at a party before another gentleman should have come to take one's place; it was to inflict on the lady a kind of outrage. The other gentlemen, at Mrs. Burrage's, were all too well occupied; there was not the smallest chance of one of them coming to his rescue. He couldn't leave Mrs. Luna, and yet he couldn't stay with her and lose the only thing he had come so much out of his way for. 'Let me at least find you a place over there, in the doorway. You can stand upon a chair—you can lean on me.'
'Thank you very much; I would much rather lean on this sofa. And I am much too tired to stand on chairs. Besides, I wouldn't for the world that either Verena or Olive should see me craning over the heads of the crowd—as if I attached the smallest importance to their perorations!'
'It isn't time for the peroration yet,' Ransom said, with savage dryness; and he sat forward, with his elbow on his knees, his eyes on the ground, a flush in his sallow cheek.
'It's never time to say such things as those,' Mrs. Luna remarked, arranging her laces.
'How do you know what she is saying?'
'I can tell by the way her voice goes up and down. It sounds so silly.'
Ransom sat there five minutes longer—minutes which, he felt, the recording angel ought to write down to his credit—and asked himself how Mrs. Luna could be such a goose as not to see that she was making him hate her. But she was goose enough for anything. He tried to appear indifferent, and it occurred to him to doubt whether the Mississippi system could be right, after all. It certainly hadn't foreseen such a case as this. 'It's as plain as day that Mr. Burrage intends to marry her—if he can,' he said in a minute; that remark being better calculated than any other he could think of to dissimulate his real state of mind.
It drew no rejoinder from his companion, and after an instant he turned his head a little and glanced at her. The result of something that silently passed between them was to make her say, abruptly: 'Mr. Ransom, my sister never sent you an invitation to this place. Didn't it come from Verena Tarrant?'
'I haven't the least idea.'
'As you hadn't the least acquaintance with Mrs. Burrage, who else could it have come from?'
'If it came from Miss Tarrant, I ought at least to recognise her courtesy by listening to her.'
'If you rise from this sofa I will tell Olive what I suspect. She will be perfectly capable of carrying Verena off to China—or anywhere out of your reach.'
'And pray what is it you suspect?'
'That you two have been in correspondence.'
'Tell her whatever you like, Mrs. Luna,' said the young man, with the grimness of resignation.
'You are quite unable to deny it, I see.'
'I never contradict a lady.'
'We shall see if I can't make you tell a fib. Haven't you been seeing Miss Tarrant, too?'
'Where should I have seen her? I can't see all the way to Boston, as you said the other day.'
'Haven't you been there—on secret visits?'
Ransom started just perceptibly; but to conceal it, the next instant, he stood up.
'They wouldn't be secret if I were to tell you.'
Looking down at her he saw that her words were a happy hit, not the result of definite knowledge. But she appeared to him vain, egotistical, grasping, odious.
