ould be very happy to see you in my home." These words had
barely fallen from Verena's lips (her mother told her they were, in
general, the proper thing to say when people expressed such a desire as
that; she must not let it be assumed that she would come first to
them)--she had hardly uttered this hospitable speech when she felt the
hand of her hostess upon her arm and became aware that a passionate
appeal sat in Olive's eyes.

"You will just catch the Charles Street car," that young woman murmured,
with muffled sweetness.

Verena did not understand further than to see that she ought already to
have departed; and the simplest response was to kiss Miss Chancellor, an
act which she briefly performed. Basil Ransom understood still less, and
it was a melancholy commentary on his contention that men are not
inferior, that this meeting could not come, however rapidly, to a close
without his plunging into a blunder which necessarily aggravated those
he had already made. He had been invited by the little prophetess, and
yet he had not been invited; but he did not take that up, because he
must absolutely leave Boston on the morrow, and, besides, Miss
Chancellor appeared to have something to say to it. But he put out his
hand to Verena and said, "Good-bye, Miss Tarrant; are we not to have the
pleasure of hearing you in New York? I am afraid we are sadly sunk."

"Certainly, I should like to raise my voice in the biggest city," the
girl replied.

"Well, try to come on. I won't refute you. It would be a very stupid
world, after all, if we always knew what women were going to say."

Verena was conscious of the approach of the Charles Street car, as well
as of the fact that Miss Chancellor was in pain; but she lingered long
enough to remark that she could see he had the old-fashioned ideas--he
regarded woman as the toy of man.

"Don't say the toy--say the joy!" Ransom exclaimed. "There is one
statement I will venture to advance; I am quite as fond of you as you
are of each other!"

"Much he knows about that!" said Verena, with a side-long smile at Olive
Chancellor.

For Olive, it made her more beautiful than ever; still, there was no
trace of this mere personal elation in the splendid sententiousness with
which, turning to Mr. Ransom, she remarked: "What women may be, or may
not be, to each other, I won't attempt just now to say; but what _the
truth_ may be to a human soul, I think perhaps even a woman may faintly
suspect!"