She was dressed in white,
and her face was whiter than her garment; above it her hair seemed to
shine like fire. She took a step forward; but before she could take
another he had come down to her, on the threshold of the room. Her face
was full of suffering, and he did not attempt--before all those eyes--to
take her hand; he only said in a low tone, "I have been waiting for
you--a long time!"
"I know it--I saw you in your seat--I want to speak to you."
"Well, Miss Tarrant, don't you think you'd better be on the platform?"
cried Mr. Filer, making with both his arms a movement as if to sweep her
before him, through the waiting-room, up into the presence of the
public.
"In a moment I shall be ready. My father is making that all right." And,
to Ransom's surprise, she smiled, with all her sweetness, at the
irrepressible agent; appeared to wish genuinely to reassure him.
The three had moved together into the waiting-room, and there at the
farther end of it, beyond the vulgar, perfunctory chairs and tables,
under the flaring gas, he saw Mrs. Tarrant sitting upright on a sofa,
with immense rigidity, and a large flushed visage, full of suppressed
distortion, and beside her prostrate, fallen over, her head buried in
the lap of Verena's mother, the tragic figure of Olive Chancellor.
Ransom could scarcely know how much Olive's having flung herself upon
Mrs. Tarrant's bosom testified to the convulsive scene that had just
taken place behind the locked door.
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