She had straightened herself again, and she was
upright in her desolation. The expression of her face was a thing to
remain with him for ever; it was impossible to imagine a more vivid
presentment of blighted hope and wounded pride. Dry, desperate, rigid,
she yet wavered and seemed uncertain; her pale, glittering eyes
straining forward, as if they were looking for death. Ransom had a
vision, even at that crowded moment, that if she could have met it there
and then, bristling with steel or lurid with fire, she would have rushed
on it without a tremor, like the heroine that she was. All this while
the great agitation in the hall rose and fell, in waves and surges, as
if Selah Tarrant and the agent were talking to the multitude, trying to
calm them, succeeding for the moment, and then letting them loose again.
Whirled down by one of the fitful gusts, a lady and a gentleman issued
from the passage, and Ransom, glancing at them, recognised Mrs.
Farrinder and her husband.
"Well, Miss Chancellor," said that more successful woman, with
considerable asperity, "if this is the way you're going to reinstate our
sex!" She passed rapidly through the room, followed by Amariah, who
remarked in his transit that it seemed as if there had been a want of
organisation, and the two retreated expeditiously, without the lady's
having taken the smallest notice of Verena, whose conflict with her
mother prolonged itself. Ransom, striving, with all needful
consideration for Mrs.
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