Southern version,
of course, but Mrs. Luna didn't care anything about American politics,
and she wanted her son to know all sides), and Newton did nothing but
talk about him, calling him "Rannie," and imitating his pronunciation of
certain words. Adeline subsequently wrote that she had made up her mind
to put her affairs into his hands (Olive sighed, not unmagnanimously, as
she thought of her sister's "affairs"), and later still she mentioned
that she was thinking strongly of taking him to be Newton's tutor. She
wished this interesting child to be privately educated, and it would be
more agreeable to have in that relation a person who was already, as it
were, a member of the family. Mrs. Luna wrote as if he were prepared to
give up his profession to take charge of her son, and Olive was pretty
sure that this was only a part of her grandeur, of the habit she had
contracted, especially since living in Europe, of speaking as if in
every case she required special arrangements.

In spite of the difference in their age, Olive had long since judged
her, and made up her mind that Adeline lacked every quality that a
person needed to be interesting in her eyes. She was rich (or
sufficiently so), she was conventional and timid, very fond of
attentions from men (with whom indeed she was reputed bold, but Olive
scorned such boldness as that), given up to a merely personal,
egotistical, instinctive life, and as unconscious of the tendencies of
the age, the revenges of the future, the new truths and the great social
questions, as if she had been a mere bundle of dress-trimmings, which
she very nearly was. It was perfectly observable that she had no
conscience, and it irritated Olive deeply to see how much trouble a
woman was spared when she was constructed on that system. Adeline's
"affairs," as I have intimated, her social relations, her views of
Newton's education, her practice and her theory (for she had plenty of
that, such as it was, heaven save the mark!), her spasmodic disposition
to marry again, and her still sillier retreats in the presence of danger
(for she had not even the courage of her frivolity), these things had
been a subject of tragic consideration to Olive ever since the return of
the elder sister to America. The tragedy was not in any particular harm
that Mrs. Luna could do her (for she did her good, rather, that is, she
did her honour by laughing at her), but in the spectacle itself, the
drama, guided by the hand