falter, because she was glad of the chance. She wanted to be very simple
in all her relations with her friend, and of course it was not simple so
soon as she began to keep things back. She could at any rate keep back as
little as possible, and she felt as if she were making up for a dereliction
when she answered Olive's inquiry so promptly.
"You never told me of that," Miss Chancellor remarked, in a low tone.
"I didn't want to. I know you don't like him, and I thought it would
give you pain. Yet I wanted him to be there—I wanted him to hear."
"What does it matter—why should you care about him?"
"Well, because he is so awfully opposed!"
"How do you know that, Verena?"
At this point Verena began to hesitate. It was not, after all, so easy to
keep back only a little; it appeared rather as if one must either tell
everything or hide everything. The former course had already presented
itself to her as unduly harsh; it was because it seemed so that she had
ended by keeping the incident of Basil Ransom's visit to Monadnoc Place
buried in unspoken, in unspeakable, considerations, the only secret she
had in the world—the only thing that was all her own. She was so glad
to say what she could without betraying herself that it was only after she
had spoken that she perceived there was a danger of Olive's pushing the
inquiry to the point where, to defend herself as it were, she should be ob-
liged to practise a positive deception; and she was conscious at the same
time that the moment her secret was threatened it became dearer to her.
She began to pray silently that Olive might not push; for it would be odi-
ous, it would be impossible, to defend herself by a lie. Meanwhile,
however, she had to answer, and the way she answered was by exclaim-
ing, much more quickly than the reflexions I note might have appeared
to permit, "Well, if you can't tell from his appearance! He's the type of
the reactionary."
Verena went to the toilet-glass to see that she had put on her hat prop-
erly, and Olive slowly got up, in the manner of a person not in the least
eager for food. "Let him react as he likes—for heaven's sake don't mind
him!" That was Miss Chancellor's rejoinder, and Verena felt that it didn't
say all that was in her mind. She wished she would come down to lunch-
eon, for she, at least, was honestly hungry. She even suspected Olive had
an idea she was afraid to express, such distress it would bring with it.
"Well, you know, Verena, this isn't our real life—it isn't our work," Olive
went on.
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"Well, no, it isn't, certainly," said Verena, not pretending at first that
she did not know what Olive meant. In a moment, however, she added,
"Do you refer to this social intercourse with Mr. Burrage?"
"Not to that only." Then Olive asked abruptly, looking at her, "How
did you know his address?"
"His address?"
"Mr. Ransom's—to enable Mrs. Burrage to invite him?"
They stood for a moment interchanging a gaze. "It was in a letter I got
from him."
At these words there came into Olive's face an expression which made
her companion cross over to her directly and take her by the hand. But
the tone was different from what Verena expected, when she said, with
cold surprise: "Oh, you are in correspondence!" It showed an immense
effort of self-control.
"He wrote to me once—I never told you," Verena rejoined, smiling.
She felt that her friend's strange, uneasy eyes searched very far; a little
more and they would go to the very bottom. Well, they might go if they
would; she didn't, another article：