Project Gutenberg's The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II), by Henry James

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Title: The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II)

Author: Henry James

Release Date: November 5, 2006 [EBook #19718]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOSTONIANS, VOL. II (OF II) ***

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THE BOSTONIANS

A NOVEL

BY HENRY JAMES

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. II

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1921

_First published in 1886_

BOOK SECOND (_Continued_)

XXIV

A little more than an hour after this he stood in the parlour of Doctor
Tarrant's suburban residence, in Monadnoc Place. He had induced a
juvenile maid-servant, by an appeal somewhat impassioned, to let the
ladies know that he was there; and she had returned, after a long
absence, to say that Miss Tarrant would come down to him in a little
while. He possessed himself, according to his wont, of the nearest book
(it lay on the table, with an old magazine and a little japanned tray
containing Tarrant's professional cards--his denomination as a mesmeric
healer), and spent ten minutes in turning it over. It was a biography of
Mrs. Ada T. P. Foat, the celebrated trance-lecturer, and was embellished
by a portrait representing the lady with a surprised expression and
innumerable ringlets. Ransom said to himself, after reading a few pages,
that much ridicule had been cast upon Southern literature; but if that
was a fair specimen of Northern!--and he threw it back upon the table
with a gesture almost as contemptuous as if he had not known perfectly,
after so long a residence in the North, that it was not, while he
wondered whether this was the sort of thing Miss Tarrant had been
brought up on. There was no other book to be seen, and he remembered to
have read the magazine; so there was finally nothing for him, as the
occupants of the house failed still to appear, but to stare bef