way by his mother. The other danger was the
worst; the palpitation of her strange dread, the night of Miss
Birdseye's party, came back to her. Mr. Burrage seemed, indeed, a
protection; she reflected, with relief, that it had been arranged that
after taking Verena to drive in the Park and see the Museum of Art in
the morning, they should in the evening dine with him at Delmonico's (he
was to invite another gentleman), and go afterwards to the German opera.
Olive had kept all this to herself, as I have said; revealing to her
sister neither the vividness of her prevision that Basil Ransom would
look blank when he came down to Tenth Street and learned they had
flitted, nor the eagerness of her desire just to find herself once more
in the Boston train. It had been only this prevision that sustained her
when she gave Mr. Ransom their number.

Verena came to her room shortly before luncheon, to let her know she had
returned; and while they sat there, waiting to stop their ears when the
gong announcing the repast was beaten, at the foot of the stairs, by a
negro in a white jacket, she narrated to her friend her adventures with
Mr. Burrage--expatiated on the beauty of the park, the splendour and
interest of the Museum, the wonder of the young man's acquaintance with
everything it contained, the swiftness of his horses, the softness of
his English cart, the pleasure of rolling at that pace over roads as
firm as marble, the entertainment he promised them for the evening.
Olive listened in serious silence; she saw Verena was quite carried
away; of course she hadn't gone so far with her without knowing that
phase.

"Did Mr. Burrage try to make love to you?" Miss Chancellor inquired at
last, without a smile.

Verena had taken off her hat to arrange her feather, and as she placed
it on her head again, her uplifted arms making a frame for her face, she
said: "Yes, I suppose it was meant for love."

Olive waited for her to tell more, to tell how she had treated him, kept
him in his place, made him feel that that question was over long ago;
but as Verena gave her no further information she did not insist,
conscious as she always was that in such a relation as theirs there
should be a great respect on either side for the liberty of each. She
had never yet infringed on Verena's, and of course she wouldn't begin
now. Moreover, with the request that she meant presently to make of her
she felt that she must be discreet. She wondered whet