o be heard. We should
quench it, we should make it still, and the sound of our lips would
become the voice of universal peace! For this we must trust one another,
we must be true and gentle and kind. We must remember that the world is
ours too, ours--little as we have ever had to say about anything!--and
that the question is _not_ yet definitely settled whether it shall be a
place of injustice or a place of love!"

It was with this that the young lady finished her harangue, which was
not followed by her sinking exhausted into her chair or by any of the
traces of a laboured climax. She only turned away slowly towards her
mother, smiling over her shoulder at the whole room, as if it had been a
single person, without a flush in her whiteness, or the need of drawing
a longer breath. The performance had evidently been very easy to her,
and there might have been a kind of impertinence in her air of not
having suffered from an exertion which had wrought so powerfully on
every one else. Ransom broke into a genial laugh, which he instantly
swallowed again, at the sweet grotesqueness of this virginal creature's
standing up before a company of middle-aged people to talk to them about
"love," the note on which she had closed her harangue. It was the most
charming touch in the whole thing, and the most vivid proof of her
innocence. She had had immense success, and Mrs. Tarrant, as she took
her into her arms and kissed her, was certainly able to feel that the
audience was not disappointed. They were exceedingly affected; they
broke into exclamations and murmurs. Selah Tarrant went on conversing
ostentatiously with his neighbours, slowly twirling his long thumbs and
looking up at the cornice again, as if there could be nothing in the
brilliant manner in which his daughter had acquitted herself to surprise
_him_, who had heard her when she was still more remarkable, and who,
moreover, remembered that the affair was so impersonal. Miss Birdseye
looked round at the company with dim exultation; her large mild cheeks
were shining with unwiped tears. Young Mr. Pardon remarked, in Ransom's
hearing, that he knew parties who, if they had been present, would want
to engage Miss Verena at a high figure for the winter campaign. And
Ransom heard him add in a lower tone: "There's money for some one in
that girl; you see if she don't have quite a run!" As for our
Mississippian he kept his agreeable sensation for himself, only
wondering whether he mi