Mr. Ransom--had gone to take the little daily walk
with him to which it had been arranged that their enjoyment of each
other's society should be reduced. Arranged, I say; but that is not
exactly the word to describe the compromise arrived at by a kind of
tacit exchange of tearful entreaty and tightened grasp, after Ransom had
made it definite to Verena that he was indeed going to stay a month and
she had promised that she would not resort to base evasions, to flight
(which would avail her nothing, he notified her), but would give him a
chance, would listen to him a few minutes every day. He had insisted
that the few minutes should be an hour, and the way to spend it was
obvious. They wandered along the waterside to a rocky, shrub-covered
point, which made a walk of just the right duration. Here all the homely
languor of the region, the mild, fragrant Cape-quality, the sweetness of
white sands, quiet waters, low promontories where there were paths among
the barberries and tidal pools gleamed in the sunset--here all the
spirit of a ripe summer afternoon seemed to hang in the air. There were
wood-walks too; they sometimes followed bosky uplands, where accident
had grouped the trees with odd effects of "style," and where in grassy
intervals and fragrant nooks of rest they came out upon sudden patches
of Arcady. In such places Verena listened to her companion with her
watch in her hand, and she wondered, very sincerely, how he could care
for a girl who made the conditions of courtship so odious. He had
recognised, of course, at the very first, that he could not inflict
himself again upon Miss Chancellor, and after that awkward morning-call
I have described he did not again, for the first three weeks of his stay
at Marmion, penetrate into the cottage whose back windows overlooked the
deserted shipyard. Olive, as may be imagined, made, on this occasion, no
protest for the sake of being ladylike or of preventing him from putting
her apparently in the wrong. The situation between them was too grim; it
was war to the knife, it was a question of which should pull hardest. So
Verena took a tryst with the young man as if she had been a maid-servant
and Basil Ransom a "follower." They met a little way from the house;
beyond it, outside the village.

XXXVIII

Olive thought she knew the worst, as we have perceived; but the worst
was really something she could not know, inasmuch as up to this time
Verena chose as little to conf