If Verena had spoken at the time, she would
never have let her go to New York; the sole compensation for that
hideous mistake was that the girl, recognising it to the full, evidently
deemed now that she couldn't be communicative enough. There were certain
afternoons in August, long, beautiful and terrible, when one felt that
the summer was rounding its curve, and the rustle of the full-leaved
trees in the slanting golden light, in the breeze that ought to be
delicious, seemed the voice of the coming autumn, of the warnings and
dangers of life--portentous, insufferable hours when, as she sat under
the softly swaying vine-leaves of the trellis with Miss Birdseye and
tried, in order to still her nerves, to read something aloud to her
guest, the sound of her own quavering voice made her think more of that
baleful day at Cambridge than even of the fact that at that very moment
Verena was "off" with Mr. Ransom--had gone to take the little daily walk
with him to which it had been arranged that their enjoyment of each
other's society should be reduced. Arranged, I say; but that is not
exactly the word to describe the compromise arrived at by a kind of
tacit exchange of tearful entreaty and tightened grasp, after Ransom had
made it definite to Verena that he was indeed going to stay a month and
she had promised that she would not resort to base evasions, to flight
(which would avail her nothing, he notified her), but would give him a
chance, would listen to him a few minutes every day.
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