ct,
and she added: "They don't want so much as that!"

"Well, then, go in and speak for them--and sing for them--and dance for
them!"

"Olive, you are cruel!"

"Yes, I am. But promise me one thing, and I shall be--oh, so tender!"

"What a strange place for promises," said Verena, with a shiver, looking
about her into the night.

"Yes, I am dreadful; I know it. But promise." And Olive drew the girl
nearer to her, flinging over her with one hand the fold of a cloak that
hung ample upon her own meagre person, and holding her there with the
other, while she looked at her, suppliant but half hesitating.
"Promise!" she repeated.

"Is it something terrible?"

"Never to listen to one of them, never to be bribed----"

At this moment the house-door was opened again, and the light of the
hall projected itself across the little piazza. Matthias Pardon stood in
the aperture, and Tarrant and his wife, with the two other visitors,
appeared to have come forward as well, to see what detained Verena.

"You seem to have started a kind of lecture out here," Mr. Pardon said.
"You ladies had better look out, or you'll freeze together!"

Verena was reminded by her mother that she would catch her death, but
she had already heard sharply, low as they were spoken, five last words
from Olive, who now abruptly released her and passed swiftly over the
path from the porch to her waiting carriage. Tarrant creaked along, in
pursuit, to assist Miss Chancellor; the others drew Verena into the
house. "Promise me not to marry!"--that was what echoed in her startled
mind, and repeated itself there when Mr. Burrage returned to the charge,
asking her if she wouldn't at least appoint some evening when they might
listen to her. She knew that Olive's injunction ought not to have
surprised her; she had already felt it in the air; she would have said
at any time, if she had been asked, that she didn't suppose Miss
Chancellor would want her to marry. But the idea, uttered as her friend
had uttered it, had a new solemnity, and the effect of that quick,
violent colloquy was to make her nervous and impatient, as if she had
had a sudden glimpse of futurity. That was rather awful, even if it
represented the fate one would like.

When the two young men from the College pressed their petition, she
asked, with a laugh that surprised them, whether they wished to "mock
and muddle" her. They went away, assenting to Mrs. Tarrant's last
remark: "I am afraid you'l