had a good many
tutors since Ransom gave him up, and it could not be said that his educa-
tion languished. Mrs. Luna spoke with pride of the manner in which he
went through them; if he did not master his lessons, he mastered his
teachers, and she had the happy conviction that she gave him every ad-
vantage. Ransom's delay was diplomatic, but at the end of ten minutes
he returned to the young ladies in Boston; he asked why, with their ag-
gressive programme, one hadn't begun to feel their onset, why the
echoes of Miss Tarrant's eloquence hadn't reached his ears. Hadn't she
come out yet in public? was she not coming to stir them up in New
York? He hoped she hadn't broken down.
"She didn't seem to break down last summer, at the Female Conven-
tion," Mrs. Luna replied. "Have you forgotten that too? Didn't I tell you
of the sensation she produced there, and of what I heard from Boston
about it? Do you mean to say I didn't give you that "Transcript," with the
report of her great speech? It was just before they sailed for Europe; she
went off with flying colours, in a blaze of fireworks." Ransom protested
that he had not heard this affair mentioned till that moment, and then,
when they compared dates, they found it had taken place just after his
last visit to Mrs. Luna. This, of course, gave her a chance to say that he
had treated her even worse than she supposed; it had been her
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impression, at any rate, that they had talked together about Verena's
sudden bound into fame. Apparently she confounded him with some
one else, that was very possible; he was not to suppose that he occupied
such a distinct place in her mind, especially when she might die twenty
deaths before he came near her. Ransom demurred to the implication
that Miss Tarrant was famous; if she were famous, wouldn't she be in the
New York papers? He hadn't seen her there, and he had no recollection
of having encountered any mention at the time (last June, was it?) of her
exploits at the Female Convention. A local reputation doubtless she had,
but that had been the case a year and a half before, and what was expec-
ted of her then was to become a first-class national glory. He was willing
to believe that she had created some excitement in Boston, but he
shouldn't attach much importance to that till one began to see her photo-
graph in the stores. Of course, one must give her time, but he had sup-
posed Miss Chancellor was going to put her through faster.
If he had taken a contradictious tone on purpose to draw Mrs. Luna
out, he could not have elicited more of the information he desired. It was
perfectly true that he had seen no reference to Verena's performances in
the preceding June; there were periods when the newspapers seemed to
him so idiotic that for weeks he never looked at one. He learned from
Mrs. Luna that it was not Olive who had sent her the "Transcript" and in
letters had added some private account of the doings at the convention
to the testimony of that amiable sheet; she had been indebted for this ser-
vice to a "gentleman-friend," who wrote her everything that happened in
Boston, and what every one had every day for dinner. Not that it was ne-
cessary for her happiness to know; but the gentleman she spoke of didn't
know what to invent to please her. A Bostonian couldn't imagine that
one didn't want to know, and that was their idea of ingratiating them-
selves, or, at any rate, it was his, poor man. Olive would never have gone
into particulars about Verena; she regarded her sister as another article：