nised nothing; she had no suspicions of social importance. Yet
she smiled with all her radiance, as she looked from Miss Chancellor to
him; smiled because she liked to smile, to please, to feel her
success--or was it because she was a perfect little actress, and this
was part of her training? She took the hand that Olive put out to her;
the others, rather solemnly, sat looking up from their chairs.

"You don't know me, but I want to know you," Olive said. "I can thank
you now. Will you come and see me?"

"Oh yes; where do you live?" Verena answered, in the tone of a girl for
whom an invitation (she hadn't so many) was always an invitation.

Miss Chancellor syllabled her address, and Mrs. Tarrant came forward,
smiling. "I know about you, Miss Chancellor. I guess your father knew my
father--Mr. Greenstreet. Verena will be very glad to visit you. We shall
be very happy to see you in _our_ home."

Basil Ransom, while the mother spoke, wanted to say something to the
daughter, who stood there so near him, but he could think of nothing
that would do; certain words that came to him, his Mississippi phrases,
seemed patronising and ponderous. Besides, he didn't wish to assent to
what she had said; he wished simply to tell her she was delightful, and
it was difficult to mark that difference. So he only smiled at her in
silence, and she smiled back at him--a smile that seemed to him quite
for himself.

"Where do you live?" Olive asked; and Mrs. Tarrant replied that they
lived at Cambridge, and that the horse-cars passed just near their door.
Whereupon Olive insisted "Will you come very soon?" and Verena said, Oh
yes, she would come very soon, and repeated the number in Charles
Street, to show that she had taken heed of it. This was done with
childlike good faith. Ransom saw that she would come and see any one who
would ask her like that, and he regretted for a minute that he was not a
Boston lady, so that he might extend to her such an invitation. Olive
Chancellor held her hand a moment longer, looked at her in farewell, and
then, saying, "Come, Mr. Ransom," drew him out of the room. In the hall
they met Mr. Pardon, coming up from the lower regions with a jug of
water and a tumbler. Miss Chancellor's hackney-coach was there, and when
Basil had put her into it she said to him that she wouldn't trouble him
to drive with her--his hotel was not near Charles Street. He had so
little desire to sit by her side--he wanted to smoke--tha