pointment the
night before to call for her to drive at that early hour. They had other
engagements in the afternoon--the principal of which was to meet a group
of earnest people at the house of one of the great local promoters.
Olive would whisk Verena off to these appointments directly after lunch;
she flattered herself that she could arrange matters so that there would
not be half an hour in the day during which Basil Ransom, complacently
calling, would find the Bostonians in the house. She had had this well
in mind when, at Mrs. Burrage's, she was driven to give him their
address; and she had had it also in mind that she would ask Verena, as a
special favour, to accompany her back to Boston on the next day but one,
which was the morning of the morrow. There had been considerable talk of
her staying a few days with Mrs. Burrage--staying on after her own
departure; but Verena backed out of it spontaneously, seeing how the
idea worried her friend. Olive had accepted the sacrifice, and their
visit to New York was now cut down, in intention, to four days, one of
which, the moment she perceived whither Basil Ransom was tending, Miss
Chancellor promised herself also to suppress. She had not mentioned that
to Verena yet; she hesitated a little, having a slightly bad conscience
about the concessions she had already obtained from her friend. Verena
made such concessions with a generosity which caused one's heart to ache
for admiration, even while one asked for them; and never once had Olive
known her to demand the smallest credit for any virtue she showed in
this way, or to bargain for an instant about any effort she made to
oblige. She had been delighted with the idea of spending a week under
Mrs. Burrage's roof; she had said, too, that she believed her mother
would die happy (not that there was the least prospect of Mrs. Tarrant's
dying) if she could hear of her having such an experience as that; and
yet, perceiving how solemn Olive looked about it, how she blanched and
brooded at the prospect, she had offered to give it up, with a smile
sweeter, if possible, than any that had ever sat in her eyes. Olive knew
what that meant for her, knew what a power of enjoyment she still had,
in spite of the tension of their common purpose, their vital work, which
had now, as they equally felt, passed into the stage of realisation, of
fruition; and that is why her conscience rather pricked her for
consenting to this further act of renunciat