"
"Yes, I remember how it was: he did happen, and then you happened to
hate him, and tried to get out of it."
Miss Chancellor saw, I say, why Adeline had come to her at the hour she
knew she was always writing letters, after having given her all the
attention that was necessary the day before; she had come simply to make
herself disagreeable, as Olive knew, of old, the spirit sometimes moved
her irresistibly to do. It seemed to her that Adeline had been
disagreeable enough in not having beguiled Basil Ransom into a marriage,
according to that memorable calculation of probabilities in which she
indulged (with a licence that she scarcely liked definitely to recall)
when the pair made acquaintance under her eyes in Charles Street, and
Mrs. Luna seemed to take to him as much as she herself did little. She
would gladly have accepted him as a brother-in-law, for the harm such a
relation could do one was limited and definite; whereas in his general
capacity of being at large in her life the ability of the young
Mississippian to injure her seemed somehow immense. "I wrote to
him--that time--for a perfectly definite reason," she said. "I thought
mother would have liked us to know him. But it was a mistake."
"How do you know it was a mistake? Mother would have liked him, I
daresay."
"I mean my acting as I did; it was a theory of duty which I allowed to
press me too much. I always do. Duty should be obvious; one shouldn't
hunt round for it.
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