done and what was not done; but there
was only one thing that equalled this perfectly gentle and natural
insensibility to favours--namely, the inveteracy of her habit of not
asking them. Olive had had an apprehension that she would flush a little
at learning the terms on which they should now be able to pursue their
career together; but Verena never changed colour; it was either not new
or not disagreeable to her that the authors of her being should be
bought off, silenced by money, treated as the troublesome of the lower
orders are treated when they are not locked up; so that her friend had a
perception, after this, that it would probably be impossible in any way
ever to offend her. She was too rancourless, too detached from
conventional standards, too free from private self-reference. It was too
much to say of her that she forgave injuries, since she was not
conscious of them; there was in forgiveness a certain arrogance of which
she was incapable, and her bright mildness glided over the many traps
that life sets for our consistency. Olive had always held that pride was
necessary to character, but there was no peculiarity of Verena's that
could make her spirit seem less pure. The added luxuries in the little
house at Cambridge, which even with their help was still such a penal
settlement, made her feel afresh that before she came to the rescue the
daughter of that house had traversed a desert of sordid misery. She had
cooked and washed and swept and stitched; she had worked harder than any
of Miss Chancellor's servants. These things had left no trace upon her
person or her mind; everything fresh and fair renewed itself in her with
extraordinary facility, everything ugly and tiresome evaporated as soon
as it touched her; but Olive deemed that, being what she was, she had a
right to immense compensations. In the future she should have exceeding
luxury and ease, and Miss Chancellor had no difficulty in persuading
herself that persons doing the high intellectual and moral work to which
the two young ladies in Charles Street were now committed owed it to
themselves, owed it to the groaning sisterhood, to cultivate the best
material conditions. She herself was nothing of a sybarite, and she had
proved, visiting the alleys and slums of Boston in the service of the
Associated Charities, that there was no foulness of disease or misery
she feared to look in the face; but her house had always been thoroughly
well regulated, she w