to protest that, after all, a single day didn't
matter, and yet accepted the sacrifice and was a little ashamed of
it--it was in this manner that the agreement as to an immediate retreat
was sealed. Verena could not shut her eyes to the fact that for a month
she had been less frank, and if she wished to do penance this
abbreviation of their pleasure in New York, even if it made her almost
completely miss Basil Ransom, was easier than to tell Olive just now
that the letter was _not_ all, that there had been a long visit, a talk,
and a walk besides, which she had been covering up for ever so many
weeks. And of what consequence, anyway, was the missing? Was it such a
pleasure to converse with a gentleman who only wanted to let you
know--and why he should want it so much Verena couldn't guess--that he
thought you quite preposterous? Olive took her from place to place, and
she ended by forgetting everything but the present hour, and the bigness
and variety of New York, and the entertainment of rolling about in a
carriage with silk cushions, and meeting new faces, new expressions of
curiosity and sympathy, assurances that one was watched and followed.
Mingled with this was a bright consciousness, sufficient for the moment,
that one was moreover to dine at Delmonico's and go to the German opera.
There was enough of the epicurean in Verena's composition to make it
easy for her in certain conditions to live only for the hour.

XXXI

When she returned with her companion to the establishment in Tenth
Street she saw two notes lying on the table in the hall; one of which
she perceived to be addressed to Miss Chancellor, the other to herself.
The hand was different, but she recognised both. Olive was behind her on
the steps, talking to the coachman about sending another carriage for
them in half an hour (they had left themselves but just time to dress);
so that she simply possessed herself of her own note and ascended to her
room. As she did so she felt that all the while she had known it would
be there, and was conscious of a kind of treachery, an unfriendly
wilfulness, in not being more prepared for it. If she could roll about
New York the whole afternoon and forget that there might be difficulties
ahead, that didn't alter the fact that there _were_ difficulties, and
that they might even become considerable--might not be settled by her
simply going back to Boston. Half an hour later, as she drove up the
Fifth Avenue with