Olive was completely aware of this, and she stilled
herself, while the girl uttered one soft, pleading sentence after
another, into the same rapt attention she was in the habit of sending up
from the benches of an auditorium. She looked at Verena fixedly, felt
that she was stirred to her depths, that she was exquisitely passionate
and sincere, that she was a quivering, spotless, consecrated maiden,
that she really had renounced, that they were both safe, and that her
own injustice and indelicacy had been great. She came to her slowly,
took her in her arms and held her long--giving her a silent kiss. From
which Verena knew that she believed her.
XXXII
The hour that Olive proposed to Mrs. Burrage, in a note sent early the
next morning, for the interview to which she consented to lend herself,
was the stroke of noon; this period of the day being chosen in
consequence of a prevision of many subsequent calls upon her time. She
remarked in her note that she did not wish any carriage to be sent for
her, and she surged and swayed up the Fifth Avenue on one of the
convulsive, clattering omnibuses which circulate in that thoroughfare.
One of her reasons for mentioning twelve o'clock had been that she knew
Basil Ransom was to call at Tenth Street at eleven, and (as she supposed
he didn't intend to stay all day) this would give her time to see him
come and go. It had been tacitly agreed between them, the night before,
that Verena was quite firm enough in her faith to submit to his visit,
and that such a course would be much more dignified than dodging it.
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