rs. Luna paused, Basil Ransom became aware that, in the other
room, Verena's address had begun; the sound of her clear, bright,
ringing voice, an admirable voice for public uses, came to them from the
distance. His eagerness to stand where he could hear her better, and see
her into the bargain, made him start in his place, and this movement
produced an outgush of mocking laughter on the part of his companion.
But she didn't say--"Go, go, deluded man, I take pity on you!" she only
remarked, with light impertinence, that he surely wouldn't be so wanting
in gallantry as to leave a lady absolutely alone in a public place--it
was so Mrs. Luna was pleased to qualify Mrs. Burrage's drawing-room--in
the face of her entreaty that he would remain with her. She had the
better of poor Ransom, thanks to the superstitions of Mississippi. It
was in his simple code a gross rudeness to withdraw from conversation
with a lady at a party before another gentleman should have come to take
one's place; it was to inflict on the lady a kind of outrage. The other
gentlemen, at Mrs. Burrage's, were all too well occupied; there was not
the smallest chance of one of them coming to his rescue. He couldn't
leave Mrs. Luna, and yet he couldn't stay with her and lose the only
thing he had come so much out of his way for. "Let me at least find you
a place over there, in the doorway. You can stand upon a chair--you can
lean on me."

"Thank you very much; I would much rather lean on this sofa. And I am
much too tired to stand on chairs. Besides, I wouldn't for the world
that either Verena or Olive should see me craning over the heads of the
crowd--as if I attached the smallest importance to their perorations!"

"It isn't time for the peroration yet," Ransom said, with savage
dryness; and he sat forward, with his elbow on his knees, his eyes on
the ground, a flush in his sallow cheek.

"It's never time to say such things as those," Mrs. Luna remarked,
arranging her laces.

"How do you know what she is saying?"

"I can tell by the way her voice goes up and down. It sounds so silly."

Ransom sat there five minutes longer--minutes which, he felt, the
recording angel ought to write down to his credit--and asked himself how
Mrs. Luna could be such a goose as not to see that she was making him
hate her. But she was goose enough for anything. He tried to appear
indifferent, and it occurred to him to doubt whether the Mississippi
system could be right, after