allacies I shall have to woo you from. Hear
them, the senseless brutes!" The storm was now raging in the hall, and
it deepened, to such a point that Verena turned to him in a supreme
appeal.

"I could soothe them with a word!"

"Keep your soothing words for me--you will have need of them all, in our
coming time," Ransom said, laughing. He pulled open the door again,
which led into the lobby, but he was driven back, with Verena, by a
furious onset from Mrs. Tarrant. Seeing her daughter fairly arrayed for
departure, she hurled herself upon her, half in indignation, half in a
blind impulse to cling, and with an outpouring of tears, reproaches,
prayers, strange scraps of argument and iterations of farewell, closed
her about with an embrace which was partly a supreme caress, partly the
salutary castigation she had, three minutes before, expressed the wish
to administer, and altogether for the moment a check upon the girl's
flight.

"Mother, dearest, it's all for the best, I can't help it, I love you
just the same; let me go, let me go!" Verena stammered, kissing her
again, struggling to free herself, and holding out her hand to Ransom.
He saw now that she only wanted to get away, to leave everything behind
her. Olive was close at hand, on the threshold of the room, and as soon
as Ransom looked at her he became aware that the weakness she had just
shown had passed away. 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