they would just keep still and let
others press forward who seemed to be called. If they were called, they
would know it; and if they weren't, they could just hold on to each
other as they had always done. Tarrant was very fond of alternatives,
and he mentioned several others; it was never his fault if his listeners
failed to think him impartial. They hadn't much, as Miss Chancellor
could see; she could tell by their manner of life that they hadn't raked
in the dollars; but they had faith that, whether one raised one's voice
or simply worked on in silence, the principal difficulties would
straighten themselves out; and they had also a considerable experience
of great questions. Tarrant spoke as if, as a family, they were prepared
to take charge of them on moderate terms. He always said "ma'am" in
speaking to Olive, to whom, moreover, the air had never been so filled
with the sound of her own name. It was always in her ear, save when Mrs.
Tarrant and Verena conversed in prolonged and ingenuous asides; this was
still for her benefit, but the pronoun sufficed them. She had wished to
judge Doctor Tarrant (not that she believed he had come honestly by his
title), to make up her mind. She had done these things now, and she
expressed to herself the kind of man she believed him to be in
reflecting that if she should offer him ten thousand dollars to renounce
all claim to Verena, keeping--he and his wife--clear of her for the rest
of time, he would probably say, with his fearful smile, "Make it twenty,
money down, and I'll do it." Some image of this transaction, as one of
the possibilities of the future, outlined itself for Olive among the
moral incisions of that evening. It seemed implied in the very place,
the bald bareness of Tarrant's temporary lair, a wooden cottage, with a
rough front yard, a little naked piazza, which seemed rather to expose
than to protect, facing upon an unpaved road, in which the footway was
overlaid with a strip of planks. These planks were embedded in ice or in
liquid thaw, according to the momentary mood of the weather, and the
advancing pedestrian traversed them in the attitude, and with a good
deal of the suspense, of a rope-dancer. There was nothing in the house
to speak of; nothing, to Olive's sense, but a smell of kerosene; though
she had a consciousness of sitting down somewhere--the object creaked
and rocked beneath her--and of the table at tea being covered with a
cloth stamped in bright colou