her faint and
weak that she gave them up to him. He delivered the packet to the old
lady, and now Verena had appeared in the doorway of the house. As soon
as she saw him, she blushed crimson; but she did not, like Olive, stand
voiceless.

"Why, Mr. Ransom," she cried out, "where in the world were _you_ washed
ashore?" Miss Birdseye, meanwhile, taking her letters, had no appearance
of observing that the encounter between Olive and her visitor was a kind
of concussion.

It was Verena who eased off the situation; her gay challenge rose to her
lips as promptly as if she had had no cause for embarrassment. She was
not confused even when she blushed, and her alertness may perhaps be
explained by the habit of public speaking. Ransom smiled at her while
she came forward, but he spoke first to Olive, who had already turned
her eyes away from him and gazed at the blue sea-view as if she were
wondering what was going to happen to her at last.

"Of course you are very much surprised to see me; but I hope to be able
to induce you to regard me not absolutely in the light of an intruder. I
found your door open, and I walked in, and Miss Birdseye seemed to think
I might stay. Miss Birdseye, I put myself under your protection; I
invoke you; I appeal to you," the young man went on. "Adopt me, answer
for me, cover me with the mantle of your charity!"

Miss Birdseye looked up from her letters, as if at first she had only
faintly heard his appeal. She turned her eyes from Olive to Verena; then
she said, "Doesn't it seem as if we had room for all? When I remember
what I have seen in the South, Mr. Ransom's being here strikes me as a
great triumph."

Olive evidently failed to understand, and Verena broke in with
eagerness, "It was by my letter, of course, that you knew we were here.
The one I wrote just before we came, Olive," she went on. "Don't you
remember I showed it to you?"

At the mention of this act of submission on her friend's part Olive
started, flashing her a strange look; then she said to Basil that she
didn't see why he should explain so much about his coming; every one had
a right to come. It was a very charming place; it ought to do any one
good. "But it will have one defect for you," she added; "three-quarters
of the summer residents are women!"

This attempted pleasantry on Miss Chancellor's part, so unexpected, so
incongruous, uttered with white lips and cold eyes, struck Ransom to
that degree by its oddity that he