remembered having already spoken to him,
while the Mississippian said to himself that there was nothing on the
face of it to make it strange there should be between these fair,
successful young persons some such question of love or marriage as Mrs.
Luna had tattled about. Mr. Burrage was successful, he could see that in
the turn of an eye; not perhaps as having a commanding intellect or a
very strong character, but as being rich, polite, handsome, happy,
amiable, and as wearing a splendid camellia in his buttonhole. And that
_he_, at any rate, thought Verena had succeeded was proved by the
casual, civil tone, and the contented distraction of eye, with which he
exclaimed, "You don't mean to say you were not moved by that! It's my
opinion that Miss Tarrant will carry everything before her." He was so
pleased himself, and so safe in his conviction, that it didn't matter to
him what any one else thought; which was, after all, just Basil Ransom's
own state of mind.

"Oh! I didn't say I wasn't moved," the Mississippian remarked.

"Moved the wrong way!" said Verena. "Never mind; you'll be left behind."

"If I am, you will come back to console me."

"_Back?_ I shall never come back!" the girl replied gaily.

"You'll be the very first!" Ransom went on, feeling himself now, and as
if by a sudden clearing up of his spiritual atmosphere, no longer in the
vein for making the concessions of chivalry, and yet conscious that his
words were an expression of homage.

"Oh, I call that presumptuous!" Mr. Burrage exclaimed, turning away to
get a glass of water for Verena, who had refused to accept champagne,
mentioning that she had never drunk any in her life and that she
associated a kind of iniquity with it. Olive had no wine in her house
(not that Verena gave this explanation) but her father's old madeira and
a little claret; of the former of which liquors Basil Ransom had highly
approved the day he dined with her.

"Does he believe in all those lunacies?" he inquired, knowing perfectly
what to think about the charge of presumption brought by Mr. Burrage.

"Why, he's crazy about our movement," Verena responded. "He's one of my
most gratifying converts."

"And don't you despise him for it?"

"Despise him? Why, you seem to think I swing round pretty often!"

"Well, I have an idea that I shall see you swing round yet," Ransom
remarked, in a tone in which it would have appeared to Henry Burrage,
had he heard these words, that pre