e; there were periods when the newspapers seemed to him
so idiotic that for weeks he never looked at one. He learned from Mrs.
Luna that it was not Olive who had sent her the "Transcript" and in
letters had added some private account of the doings at the convention
to the testimony of that amiable sheet; she had been indebted for this
service to a "gentleman-friend," who wrote her everything that happened
in Boston, and what every one had every day for dinner. Not that it was
necessary for her happiness to know; but the gentleman she spoke of
didn't know what to invent to please her. A Bostonian couldn't imagine
that one didn't want to know, and that was their idea of ingratiating
themselves, or, at any rate, it was his, poor man. Olive would never
have gone into particulars about Verena; she regarded her sister as
quite too much one of the profane, and knew Adeline couldn't understand
why, when she took to herself a bosom-friend, she should have been at
such pains to select her in just the most dreadful class in the
community. Verena was a perfect little adventuress, and quite third-rate
into the bargain; but, of course, she was a pretty girl enough, if one
cared for hair of the colour of cochineal. As for her people, they were
too absolutely awful; it was exactly as if she, Mrs. Luna, had struck up
an intimacy with the daughter of her chiropodist. It took Olive to
invent such monstrosities, and to think she was doing something great
for humanity when she did so; though, in spite of her wanting to turn
everything over, and put the lowest highest, she could be just as
contemptuous and invidious, when it came to really mixing, as if she
were some grand old duchess. She must do her the justice to say that she
hated the Tarrants, the father and mother; but, all the same, she let
Verena run to and fro between Charles Street and the horrible hole they
lived in, and Adeline knew from that gentleman who wrote so copiously
that the girl now and then spent a week at a time at Cambridge. Her
mother, who had been ill for some weeks, wanted her to sleep there. Mrs.
Luna knew further, by her correspondent, that Verena had--or had had the
winter before--a great deal of attention from gentlemen. She didn't know
how she worked that into the idea that the female sex was sufficient to
itself; but she had grounds for saying that this was one reason why
Olive had taken her abroad. She was afraid Verena would give in to some
man, and she want