Talk about influence! you should have seen the influence I
obtained over her."
"Well, what good will it do, if I'm going to tell Olive about your
visit?"
"Well, you see, I think she hopes you won't. She believes you are going
to convert me privately--so that I shall blaze forth, suddenly, out of
the darkness of Mississippi, as a first-class proselyte: very effective
and dramatic."
Verena struck Basil Ransom as constantly simple, but there were moments
when her candour seemed to him preternatural. "If I thought that would
be the effect, I might make an exception," she remarked, speaking as if
such a result were, after all, possible.
"Oh, Miss Tarrant, you will convert me enough, any way," said the young
man.
"Enough? What do you mean by enough?"
"Enough to make me terribly unhappy."
She looked at him a moment, evidently not understanding; but she tossed
him a retort at a venture, turned away, and took her course homeward.
The retort was that if he should be unhappy it would serve him right--a
form of words that committed her to nothing. As he returned to Boston he
saw how curious he should be to learn whether she had betrayed him, as
it were, to Miss Chancellor. He might learn through Mrs. Luna; that
would almost reconcile him to going to see her again. Olive would
mention it in writing to her sister, and Adeline would repeat the
complaint. Perhaps she herself would even make him a scene about it;
that would be, for him, part of the unhappiness he had foretold to
Verena Tarrant.
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