inions, preferences. She was sure that if Olive would only
take a favourable view of her son Miss Tarrant would instantly throw
herself into it. "It's very true that you may ask me," added Mrs.
Burrage, smiling, "how you can take a favourable view of a young man who
wants to marry the very person in the world you want most to keep
unmarried!"

This description of Verena was of course perfectly correct; but it was
not agreeable to Olive to have the fact in question so clearly
perceived, even by a person who expressed it with an air intimating that
there was nothing in the world _she_ couldn't understand.

"Did your son know that you were going to speak to me about this?" Olive
asked, rather coldly, waiving the question of her influence on Verena
and the state in which she wished her to remain.

"Oh yes, poor dear boy; we had a long talk yesterday, and I told him I
would do what I could for him. Do you remember the little visit I paid
to Cambridge last spring, when I saw you at his rooms? Then it was I
began to perceive how the wind was setting; but yesterday we had a real
_eclaircissement_. I didn't like it at all, at first; I don't mind
telling you that, now--now that I am really enthusiastic about it. When
a girl is as charming, as original, as Miss Tarrant, it doesn't in the
least matter who she is; she makes herself the standard by which you
measure her; she makes her own position. And then Miss Tarrant has such
a future!" Mrs. Burrage added, quickly, as if that were the last thing
to be overlooked. "The whole question has come up again--the feeling
that Henry tried to think dead, or at least dying, has revived, through
the--I hardly know what to call it, but I really may say the
unexpectedly great effect of her appearance here. She was really
wonderful on Wednesday evening; prejudice, conventionality, every
presumption there might be against her, had to fall to the ground. I
expected a success, but I didn't expect what you gave us," Mrs. Burrage
went on, smiling, while Olive noted her "you." "In short, my poor boy
flamed up again; and now I see that he will never again care for any
girl as he cares for that one. My dear Miss Chancellor, _j'en ai pris
mon parti_, and perhaps you know my way of doing that sort of thing. I
am not at all good at resigning myself, but I am excellent at taking up
a craze. I haven't renounced, I have only changed sides. For or against,
I must be a partisan. Don't you know that kind of na