fered to Miss Chancellor. Olive did two things: she listened
intently and eagerly, judging there was distinct danger in the air
(which, however, she had not wanted Mrs. Luna to tell her, having
perceived it for herself the night before); and she saw that poor
Adeline was fabricating fearfully, that the "rebuff" was altogether an
invention. Mr. Ransom was evidently preoccupied with Verena, but he had
not needed Mrs. Luna's cruelty to make him so. So Olive maintained an
attitude of great reserve; she did not take upon herself to announce
that her own version was that Adeline, for reasons absolutely
imperceptible to others, had tried to catch Basil Ransom, had failed in
her attempt, and, furious at seeing Verena preferred to a person of her
importance (Olive remembered the _spretae injuria formae_), now wished
to do both him and the girl an ill turn. This would be accomplished if
she could induce Olive to interfere. Miss Chancellor was conscious of an
abundant readiness to interfere, but it was not because she cared for
Adeline's mortification. I am not sure, even, that she did not think her
_fiasco_ but another illustration of her sister's general uselessness,
and rather despise her for it; being perfectly able at once to hold that
nothing is baser than the effort to entrap a man, and to think it very
ignoble to have to renounce it because you can't. Olive kept these
reflexions to herself, but she went so far as to say to her sister that
she didn't see where the "pique" came in. How could it hurt Adeline that
he should turn his attention to Verena? What was Verena to her?

"Why, Olive Chancellor, how can you ask?" Mrs. Luna boldly responded.
"Isn't Verena everything to you, and aren't you everything to me, and
wouldn't an attempt--a successful one--to take Verena away from you
knock you up fearfully, and shouldn't I suffer, as you know I suffer, by
sympathy?"

I have said that it was Miss Chancellor's plan of life not to lie, but
such a plan was compatible with a kind of consideration for the truth
which led her to shrink from producing it on poor occasions. So she
didn't say, "Dear me, Adeline, what humbug! you know you hate Verena and
would be very glad if she were drowned!" She only said, "Well, I see;
but it's very roundabout." What she did see was that Mrs. Luna was eager
to help her to stop off Basil Ransom from "making head," as the phrase
was; and the fact that her motive was spite, and not tenderness for the
Bos