he was not eager for the changes
she advocated, and wished to show him that, especially to a Southerner
who had bitten the dust, her sex could be magnanimous. This know-
ledge of his secret heresy seemed to him to be also in the faces of the oth-
er ladies, whose circumspect glances, however (for he had not been in-
troduced), treated it as a pity rather than as a shame. He was conscious
of all these middle-aged feminine eyes, conscious of curls, rather limp,
that depended from dusky bonnets, of heads poked forward, as if with a
waiting, listening, familiar habit, of no one being very bright or gay—no
one, at least, but that girl he had noticed before, who had a brilliant head,
and who now hovered on the edge of the conclave. He met her eye
again; she was watching him too. It had been in his thought that Mrs.
Farrinder, to whom his cousin might have betrayed or misrepresented
him, would perhaps defy him to combat, and he wondered whether he
could pull himself together (he was extremely embarrassed) sufficiently
to do honour to such a challenge. If she would fling down the glove on
the temperance question, it seemed to him that it would be in him to pick
it up; for the idea of a meddling legislation on this subject filled him with
rage; the taste of liquor being good to him, and his conviction strong that
civilisation itself would be in danger if it should fall into the power of a
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herd of vociferating women (I am but the reporter of his angry formulae)
to prevent a gentleman from taking his glass. Mrs. Farrinder proved to
him that she had not the eagerness of insecurity; she asked him if he
wouldn't like to give the company some account of the social and politic-
al condition of the South. He begged to be excused, expressing at the
same time a high sense of the honour done him by such a request, while
he smiled to himself at the idea of his extemporising a lecture. He smiled
even while he suspected the meaning of the look Miss Chancellor gave
him: "Well, you are not of much account after all!" To talk to those people
about the South—if they could have guessed how little he cared to do it!
He had a passionate tenderness for his own country, and a sense of in-
timate connexion with it which would have made it as impossible for
him to take a roomful of Northern fanatics into his confidence as to read
aloud his mother's or his mistress's letters. To be quiet about the South-
ern land, not to touch her with vulgar hands, to leave her alone with her
wounds and her memories, not prating in the market-place either of her
troubles or her hopes, but waiting as a man should wait, for the slow
process, the sensible beneficence, of time—this was the desire of
Ransom's heart, and he was aware of how little it could minister to the
entertainment of Miss Birdseye's guests.
"We know so little about the women of the South; they are very voice-
less," Mrs. Farrinder remarked. "How much can we count upon them? in
what numbers would they flock to our standard? I have been recommen-
ded not to lecture in the Southern cities."
"Ah, madam, that was very cruel advice—for us!" Basil Ransom ex-
claimed, with gallantry.
"I had a magnificent audience last spring in St. Louis," a fresh young
voice announced, over the heads of the gathered group—a voice which,
on Basil's turning, like every one else, for an explanation, appeared to
have proceeded from the pretty girl with red hair. She had coloured a
little with the effort of making this declaration, and she stood there smil-
ing at her listeners.another article：