r. I met her in the street, just as she was
leaving Miss Chancellor's door. I spoke to her, and accompanied her some
distance. I passed that way because I knew it was the direct way to
Cambridge--from the Common--and I was coming out to see you any way--on
the chance."

"On the chance?" Verena repeated.

"Yes; Mrs. Luna, in New York, told me you were sometimes here, and I
wanted, at any rate, to make the attempt to find you."

It may be communicated to the reader that it was very agreeable to
Verena to learn that her visitor had made this arduous pilgrimage (for
she knew well enough how people in Boston regarded a winter journey to
the academic suburb) with only half the prospect of a reward; but her
pleasure was mixed with other feelings, or at least with the
consciousness that the whole situation was rather less simple than the
elements of her life had been hitherto. There was the germ of disorder
in this invidious distinction which Mr. Ransom had suddenly made between
Olive Chancellor, who was related to him by blood, and herself, who had
never been related to him in any way whatever. She knew Olive by this
time well enough to wish not to reveal it to her, and yet it would be
something quite new for her to undertake to conceal such an incident as
her having spent an hour with Mr. Ransom during a flying visit he had
made to Boston. She had spent hours with other gentlemen, whom Olive
didn't see; but that was different, because her friend knew about her
doing it and didn't care, in regard to the persons--didn't care, that
is, as she would care in this case. It was vivid to Verena's mind that
now Olive _would_ care. She had talked about Mr. Burrage, and Mr.
Pardon, and even about some gentlemen in Europe, and she had not (after
the first few days, a year and a half before) talked about Mr. Ransom.

Nevertheless there were reasons, clear to Verena's view, for wishing
either that he would go and see Olive or would keep away from _her_; and
the responsibility of treating the fact that he had not so kept away as
a secret seemed the greater, perhaps, in the light of this other fact,
that so far as simply seeing Mr. Ransom went--why, she quite liked it.
She had remembered him perfectly after their two former meetings,
superficial as their contact then had been; she had thought of him at
moments and wondered whether she should like him if she were to know him
better. Now, at the end of twenty minutes, she did know him bette