xceptionally cruel. She
determined, however, to make it, promising herself that her first visit
to Mrs. Tarrant should also be her last. Her only consolation was that
she expected to suffer intensely; for the prospect of suffering was
always, spiritually speaking, so much cash in her pocket. It was
arranged that Olive should come to tea (the repast that Selah designated
as his supper), when Mrs. Tarrant, as we have seen, desired to do her
honour by inviting another guest. This guest, after much deliberation
between that lady and Verena, was selected, and the first person Olive
saw on entering the little parlour in Cambridge was a young man with
hair prematurely, or, as one felt that one should say, precociously
white, whom she had a vague impression she had encountered before, and
who was introduced to her as Mr. Matthias Pardon.

She suffered less than she had hoped--she was so taken up with the
consideration of Verena's interior. It was as bad as she could have
desired; desired in order to feel that (to take her out of such a
_milieu_ as that) she should have a right to draw her altogether to
herself. Olive wished more and more to extract some definite pledge from
her; she could hardly say what it had best be as yet; she only felt that
it must be something that would have an absolute sanctity for Verena and
would bind them together for life. On this occasion it seemed to shape
itself in her mind; she began to see what it ought to be, though she
also saw that she would perhaps have to wait awhile. Mrs. Tarrant, too,
in her own house, became now a complete figure; there was no manner of
doubt left as to her being vulgar. Olive Chancellor despised vulgarity,
had a scent for it which she followed up in her own family, so that
often, with a rising flush, she detected the taint even in Adeline.
There were times, indeed, when every one seemed to have it, every one
but Miss Birdseye (who had nothing to do with it--she was an antique)
and the poorest, humblest people. The toilers and spinners, the very
obscure, these were the only persons who were safe from it. Miss
Chancellor would have been much happier if the movements she was
interested in could have been carried on only by the people she liked,
and if revolutions, somehow, didn't always have to begin with one's
self--with internal convulsions, sacrifices, executions. A common end,
unfortunately, however fine as regards a special result, does not make
community impersonal.