Such an opportunity would contribute too much
to Verena's reputation and authority to justify a refusal at the bidding
of apprehensions which were after all only vague. Olive's specific
terrors and dangers had by this time very much blown over; Basil Ransom
had given no sign of life for ages, and Henry Burrage had certainly got
his quietus before they went to Europe. If it had occurred to his mother
that she might convert Verena into the animating principle of a big
soiree, she was at least acting in good faith, for it could be no more
her wish to-day that he should marry Selah Tarrant's daughter than it
was her wish a year before. And then they should do some good to the
benighted, the most benighted, the fashionable benighted; they should
perhaps make them furious--there was always some good in that. Lastly,
Olive was conscious of a personal temptation in the matter; she was not
insensible to the pleasure of appearing in a distinguished New York
circle as a representative woman, an important Bostonian, the prompter,
colleague, associate of one of the most original girls of the time.
Basil Ransom was the person she had least expected to meet at Mrs.
Burrage's; it had been her belief that they might easily spend four days
in a city of more than a million of inhabitants without that
disagreeable accident. But it had occurred; nothing was wanting to make
it seem serious; and, setting her teeth, she shook herself, morally,
hard, for having fallen into the trap of fate.
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