ad left them--the subject, of
course, which was always the same, the subject of what they should do
together for their suffering sex. It was not that Verena was not
interested in that--gracious, no; it opened up before her, in those
wonderful colloquies with Olive, in the most inspiring way; but her
fancy would make a dart to right or left when other game crossed their
path, and her companion led her, intellectually, a dance in which her
feet--that is, her head--failed her at times for weariness. Mrs. Tarrant
found Miss Chancellor at home, but she was not gratified by even the
most transient glimpse of Mrs. Luna; a fact which, in her heart, Verena
regarded as fortunate, inasmuch as (she said to herself) if her mother,
returning from Charles Street, began to explain Miss Chancellor to her
with fresh energy, and as if she (Verena) had never seen her, and up to
this time they had had nothing to say about her, to what developments
(of the same sort) would not an encounter with Adeline have given rise?

When Verena at last said to her friend that she thought she ought to
come out to Cambridge--she didn't understand why she didn't--Olive
expressed her reasons very frankly, admitted that she was jealous, that
she didn't wish to think of the girl's belonging to any one but herself.
Mr. and Mrs. Tarrant would have authority, opposed claims, and she
didn't wish to see them, to remember that they existed. This was true,
so far as it went; but Olive could not tell Verena everything--could not
tell her that she hated that dreadful pair at Cambridge. As we know, she
had forbidden herself this emotion as regards individuals; and she
flattered herself that she considered the Tarrants as a type, a
deplorable one, a class that, with the public at large, discredited the
cause of the new truths. She had talked them over with Miss Birdseye
(Olive was always looking after her now and giving her things--the good
lady appeared at this period in wonderful caps and shawls--for she felt
she couldn't thank her enough), and even Doctor Prance's fellow-lodger,
whose animosity to flourishing evils lived in the happiest (though the
most illicit) union with the mania for finding excuses, even Miss
Birdseye was obliged to confess that if you came to examine his record,
poor Selah didn't amount to so very much. How little he amounted to
Olive perceived after she had made Verena talk, as the girl did
immensely, about her father and mother--quite unconsciou