ad come home a month before,
come home with her little boy, the only thing she had in the world, and
was paying a visit to her sister, who, of course, was the nearest thing
after the child. "But it isn't the same," she said. "Olive and I
disagree so much."

"While you and your little boy don't," the young man remarked.

"Oh no, I never differ from Newton!" And Mrs. Luna added that now she
was back she didn't know what she should do. That was the worst of
coming back; it was like being born again, at one's age--one had to
begin life afresh. One didn't even know what one had come back for.
There were people who wanted one to spend the winter in Boston; but she
couldn't stand that--she knew, at least, what she had not come back for.
Perhaps she should take a house in Washington; did he ever hear of that
little place? They had invented it while she was away. Besides, Olive
didn't want her in Boston, and didn't go through the form of saying so.
That was one comfort with Olive; she never went through any forms.

Basil Ransom had got up just as Mrs. Luna made this last declaration;
for a young lady had glided into the room, who stopped short as it fell
upon her ears. She stood there looking, consciously and rather
seriously, at Mr. Ransom; a smile of exceeding faintness played about
her lips--it was just perceptible enough to light up the native gravity
of her face. It might have been likened to a thin ray of moonlight
resting upon the wall of a prison.

"If that were true," she said, "I shouldn't tell you that I am very
sorry to have kept you waiting."

Her voice was low and agreeable--a cultivated voice--and she extended a
slender white hand to her visitor, who remarked with some solemnity (he
felt a certain guilt of participation in Mrs. Luna's indiscretion) that
he was intensely happy to make her acquaintance. He observed that Miss
Chancellor's hand was at once cold and limp; she merely placed it in
his, without exerting the smallest pressure. Mrs. Luna explained to her
sister that her freedom of speech was caused by his being a
relation--though, indeed, he didn't seem to know much about them. She
didn't believe he had ever heard of her, Mrs. Luna, though he pretended,
with his Southern chivalry, that he had. She must be off to her dinner
now, she saw the carriage was there, and in her absence Olive might give
any version of her she chose.

"I have told him you are a radical, and you may tell him, if you like,
that