h," Olive replied, after a
moment. "But I don't like those I see. They seem to me poor creatures."
And, indeed, her uppermost feeling in regard to them was a kind of cold
scorn; she thought most of them palterers and bullies. The end of the
colloquy was that Verena, having assented, with her usual docility, to
her companion's optimistic contention that it was a "phase," this taste
for evening-calls from collegians and newspaper-men, and would
consequently pass away with the growth of her mind, remarked that the
injustice of men might be an accident or might be a part of their
nature, but at any rate she should have to change a good deal before she
should want to marry.

About the middle of December Miss Chancellor received a visit from
Matthias Pardon, who had come to ask her what she meant to do about
Verena. She had never invited him to call upon her, and the appearance
of a gentleman whose desire to see her was so irrepressible as to
dispense with such a preliminary was not in her career an accident
frequent enough to have taught her equanimity. She thought Mr. Pardon's
visit a liberty; but, if she expected to convey this idea to him by
withholding any suggestion that he should sit down, she was greatly
mistaken, inasmuch as he cut the ground from under her feet by himself
offering her a chair. His manner represented hospitality enough for both
of them, and she was obliged to listen, on the edge of her sofa (she
could at least seat herself where she liked), to his extraordinary
inquiry. Of course she was not obliged to answer it, and indeed she
scarcely understood it. He explained that it was prompted by the intense
interest he felt in Miss Verena; but that scarcely made it more
comprehensible, such a sentiment (on his part) being such a curious
mixture. He had a sort of enamel of good humour which showed that his
indelicacy was his profession; and he asked for revelations of the _vie
intime_ of his victims with the bland confidence of a fashionable
physician inquiring about symptoms. He wanted to know what Miss
Chancellor meant to do, because if she didn't mean to do anything, he
had an idea--which he wouldn't conceal from her--of going into the
enterprise himself. "You see, what I should like to know is this: do you
consider that she belongs to you, or that she belongs to the people? If
she belongs to you, why don't you bring her out?"

He had no purpose and no consciousness of being impertinent; he only
wished t