Do you ask how we should
get on with them? My dear young lady, we should get on as you do!"
If Olive had answers, so had Mrs. Burrage; she had still an answer when
her visitor, taking up the supposition that it was in her power to
dispose in any manner whatsoever of Verena, declared that she didn't
know why Mrs. Burrage addressed herself to _her_, that Miss Tarrant was
free as air, that her future was in her own hands, that such a matter as
this was a kind of thing with which it could never occur to one to
interfere. "Dear Miss Chancellor, we don't ask you to interfere. The
only thing we ask of you is simply _not_ to interfere."
"And have you sent for me only for that?"
"For that, and for what I hinted at in my note; that you would really
exercise your influence with Miss Tarrant to induce her to come to us
now for a week or two. That is really, after all, the main thing I ask.
Lend her to us, here, for a little while, and we will take care of the
rest. That sounds conceited--but she _would_ have a good time."
"She doesn't live for that," said Olive.
"What I mean is that she should deliver an address every night!" Mrs.
Burrage returned, smiling.
"I think you try to prove too much. You do believe--though you pretend
you don't--that I control her actions, and as far as possible her
desires, and that I am jealous of any other relations she may possibly
form. I can imagine that we may perhaps have that air, though it only
proves how little such an association as ours is understood, and how
superficial is still"--Olive felt that her "still" was really
historical--"the interpretation of many of the elements in the activity
of women, how much the public conscience with regard to them needs to be
educated.
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