to the room, out of earshot of
the group in the doorway, and he felt that if she should be able to
compass her wish she would organise a little entertainment for herself,
in the outer drawing-room, in opposition to Miss Tarrant's address.
"Please come and sit down here a moment; we shall be quite undisturbed.
I have something very particular to say to you." She led the way to the
little sofa in the corner, where he had been talking with Olive a few
minutes before, and he accompanied her, with extreme reluctance,
grudging the moments that he should be obliged to give to her. He had
quite forgotten that he once had a vision of spending his life in her
society, and he looked at his watch as he made the observation:

"I haven't the least idea of losing any of the sport in there, you
know."

He felt, the next instant, that he oughtn't to have said that either;
but he was irritated, disconcerted, and he couldn't help it. It was in
the nature of a gallant Mississippian to do everything a lady asked him,
and he had never, remarkable as it may appear, been in the position of
finding such a request so incompatible with his own desires as now. It
was a new predicament, for Mrs. Luna evidently meant to keep him if she
could. She looked round the room, more and more pleased at their having
it to themselves, and for the moment said nothing more about the
singularity of his being there. On the contrary, she became freshly
jocular, remarked that now they had got hold of him they wouldn't easily
let him go, they would make him entertain them, induce him to give a
lecture--on the "Lights and Shadows of Southern Life," or the "Social
Peculiarities of Mississippi"--before the Wednesday Club.

"And what in the world is the Wednesday Club? I suppose it's what those
ladies were talking about," Ransom said.

"I don't know your ladies, but the Wednesday Club is this thing. I don't
mean you and me here together, but all those deluded beings in the other
room. It is New York trying to be like Boston. It is the culture, the
good form, of the metropolis. You might not think it, but it is. It's
the 'quiet set'; they _are_ quiet enough; you might hear a pin drop, in
there. Is some one going to offer up a prayer? How happy Olive must be,
to be taken so seriously! They form an association for meeting at each
other's houses, every week, and having some performance, or some paper
read, or some subject explained. The more dreary it is and the more
fea