nsom; she said to herself that since
he hated women who respected themselves (and each other), destiny would
use him rightly in hanging a person like Adeline round his neck. That
would be the way poetic justice ought to work, for him--and the law that
our prejudices, when they act themselves out, punish us in doing so.
Olive considered all this, as it was her effort to consider everything,
from a very high point of view, and ended by feeling sure it was not for
the sake of any nervous personal security that she desired to see her
two relations in New York get mixed up together. If such an event as
their marriage would gratify her sense of fitness, it would be simply as
an illustration of certain laws. Olive, thanks to the philosophic cast
of her mind, was exceedingly fond of illustrations of laws.

I hardly know, however, what illumination it was that sprang from her
consciousness (now a source of considerable comfort) that Mrs. Farrinder
was carrying the war into distant territories, and would return to
Boston only in time to preside at a grand Female Convention, already
advertised to take place in Boston in the month of June. It was
agreeable to her that this imperial woman should be away; it made the
field more free, the air more light; it suggested an exemption from
official criticism. I have not taken space to mention certain episodes
of the more recent intercourse of these ladies, and must content myself
with tracing them, lightly, in their consequences. These may be summed
up in the remark, which will doubtless startle no one by its freshness,
that two imperial women are scarcely more likely to hit it off together,
as the phrase is, than two imperial men. Since that party at Miss
Birdseye's, so important in its results for Olive, she had had occasion
to approach Mrs. Farrinder more nearly, and those overtures brought
forth the knowledge that the great leader of the feminine revolution was
the one person (in that part of the world) more concentrated, more
determined, than herself. Miss Chancellor's aspirations, of late, had
been immensely quickened; she had begun to believe in herself to a
livelier tune than she had ever listened to before; and she now
perceived that when spirit meets spirit there must either be mutual
absorption or a sharp concussion. It had long been familiar to her that
she should have to count with the obstinacy of the world at large, but
she now discovered that she should have to count also wi