"Ah, the bottom is a better place, depend on it, when from there you
move the whole mass! Besides, you are on the top as well; you are
everywhere, you are everything. I am of the opinion of that historical
character--wasn't he some king?--who thought there was a lady behind
everything. Whatever it was, he held, you have only to look for her; she
is the explanation. Well, I always look for her, and I always find her;
of course, I am always delighted to do so; but it proves she is the
universal cause. Now, you don't mean to deny that power, the power of
setting men in motion. You are at the bottom of all the wars."

"Well, I am like Mrs. Farrinder; I like opposition," Verena exclaimed,
with a happy smile.

"That proves, as I say, how in spite of your expressions of horror you
delight in the shock of battle. What do you say to Helen of Troy and the
fearful carnage she excited? It is well known that the Empress of France
was at the bottom of the last war in that country. And as for our four
fearful years of slaughter, of course, you won't deny that there the
ladies were the great motive power. The Abolitionists brought it on, and
were not the Abolitionists principally females? Who was that celebrity
that was mentioned last night?--Eliza P. Moseley. I regard Eliza as the
cause of the biggest war of which history preserves the record."

Basil Ransom enjoyed his humour the more because Verena appeared to
enjoy it; and the look with which she replied to him, at the end of this
little tirade, "Why, sir, you ought to take the platform too; we might
go round together as poison and antidote!"--this made him feel that he
had convinced her, for the moment, quite as much as it was important he
should. In Verena's face, however, it lasted but an instant--an instant
after she had glanced at Olive Chancellor, who, with her eyes fixed
intently on the ground (a look she was to learn to know so well), had a
strange expression. The girl slowly got up; she felt that she must go.
She guessed Miss Chancellor didn't like this handsome joker (it was so
that Basil Ransom struck her); and it was impressed upon her ("in time,"
as she thought) that her new friend would be more serious even than she
about the woman-question, serious as she had hitherto believed herself
to be.

"I should like so much to have the pleasure of seeing you again," Ransom
continued. "I think I should be able to interpret history for you by a
new light."

"Well, I sh