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Olive had always held that pride was necessary to character, but there was no peculiarity of Verena's that could make her spirit seem less pure. The added luxuries in the little house at Cambridge, which even with their help was still such a penal settlement, made her feel afresh that before she came to the rescue the daughter of that house had traversed a desert of sordid misery.
Mingled with this was a bright consciousness, sufficient for the moment, that one was moreover to dine at Delmonico's and go to the German opera. There was enough of the epicurean in Verena's composition to make it easy for her in certain conditions to live only for the hour.
Tarrant sitting upright on a sofa, with immense rigidity, and a large flushed visage, full of suppressed distortion, and beside her prostrate, fallen over, her head buried in the lap of Verena's mother, the tragic figure of Olive Chancellor. Ransom could scarcely know how much Olive's having flung herself upon Mrs.
In the course of the afternoon Miss Tredgold called Verena aside. "I know well, my dear, what you are thinking," she said. "You believe that I am terribly hard on your sister." Verena's eyes sought the ground. "Yes, I quite know what you think," repeated Miss Tredgold. "But, Verena, you are wrong. At least, if I am hard, it is for her good."
As I say, she felt it to be a considerable mercy that Verena's attitude was frank, for it gave her something to take hold of; she could no longer be put off with sophistries about receiving visits from handsome and unscrupulous young men for the sake of the opportunities it gave one to convert them.
Verena's initial appearance in Boston, as he called her performance at Miss Birdseye's, had been a great success; and this reflexion added, as I say, to his habitually sacerdotal expression. He was incapable of giving an off-hand answer or opinion on the simplest occasion, and his tone of high deliberation increased in proportion as the subject was trivial or domestic.
"Why do you talk of being poor and unheard of? Aren't you getting on quite well in this city?" This question of Verena's left him no time, or at least no coolness, to remember that to Mrs. Luna and to Olive he had put a fine face on his prospects, and that any impression the girl might have about them was but the natural echo of what these ladies believed.
Her motif was now a kind of unprepared tribute to Miss Birdseye, the fruit of the occasion and of the unanimous tenderness of the younger members of the circle, which made her a willing mouthpiece. Verena's face brightened and grew triumphant as she spoke, but she brought tears into the eyes of most of the others.
Verena's eyes were wide open, and a sort of terror filled them. "Don't start, dear. That person is your sister Pauline." "Oh! Pauline! Impossible! Impossible!" cried Verena. "It is true, nevertheless. Do you remember that day when she was nearly drowned?" "Can I forget it?"
The morning hours of the next day dragged by without incident. Charity had imagined that, in some way or other, she would learn whether Harney had already left; but Verena's deafness prevented her being a source of news, and no one came to the house who could bring enlightenment. Mr. Royall went out early, and did not return till Verena had set the table for the midday meal.
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