for her not to
falter, because she was glad of the chance. She wanted to be very simple
in all her relations with her friend, and of course it was not simple so
soon as she began to keep things back. She could at any rate keep back
as little as possible, and she felt as if she were making up for a
dereliction when she answered Olive's inquiry so promptly.

"You never told me of that," Miss Chancellor remarked, in a low tone.

"I didn't want to. I know you don't like him, and I thought it would
give you pain. Yet I wanted him to be there--I wanted him to hear."

"What does it matter--why should you care about him?"

"Well, because he is so awfully opposed!"

"How do you know that, Verena?"

At this point Verena began to hesitate. It was not, after all, so easy
to keep back only a little; it appeared rather as if one must either
tell everything or hide everything. The former course had already
presented itself to her as unduly harsh; it was because it seemed so
that she had ended by keeping the incident of Basil Ransom's visit to
Monadnoc Place buried in unspoken, in unspeakable, considerations, the
only secret she had in the world--the only thing that was all her own.
She was so glad to say what she could without betraying herself that it
was only after she had spoken that she perceived there was a danger of
Olive's pushing the inquiry to the point where, to defend herself as it
were, she should be obliged to practise a positive deception; and she
was conscious at the same time that the moment her secret was threatened
it became dearer to her. She began to pray silently that Olive might not
push; for it would be odious, it would be impossible, to defend herself
by a lie. Meanwhile, however, she had to answer, and the way she
answered was by exclaiming, much more quickly than the reflexions I note
might have appeared to permit, "Well, if you can't tell from his
appearance! He's the type of the reactionary."

Verena went to the toilet-glass to see that she had put on her hat
properly, and Olive slowly got up, in the manner of a person not in the
least eager for food. "Let him react as he likes--for heaven's sake
don't mind him!" That was Miss Chancellor's rejoinder, and Verena felt
that it didn't say all that was in her mind. She wished she would come
down to luncheon, for she, at least, was honestly hungry. She even
suspected Olive had an idea she was afraid to express, such distress it
would bring with it. "Well,