ntic, esthetic elements which
Olive and Verena seemed to be trying to introduce into it. They insisted
so much, for instance, on the historic unhappiness of women; but Mrs.
Farrinder didn't appear to care anything for that, or indeed to know
much about history at all. She seemed to begin just to-day, and she
demanded their rights for them whether they were unhappy or not. The
upshot of this was that Olive threw herself on Verena's neck with a
movement which was half indignation, half rapture; she exclaimed that
they would have to fight the battle without human help, but, after all,
it was better so. If they were all in all to each other, what more could
they want? They would be isolated, but they would be free; and this view
of the situation brought with it a feeling that they had almost already
begun to be a force. It was not, indeed, that Olive's resentment faded
quite away; for not only had she the sense, doubtless very presumptuous,
that Mrs. Farrinder was the only person thereabouts of a stature to
judge her (a sufficient cause of antagonism in itself, for if we like to
be praised by our betters we prefer that censure should come from the
other sort), but the kind of opinion she had unexpectedly betrayed,
after implying such esteem in the earlier phase of their intercourse,
made Olive's cheeks occasionally flush. She prayed heaven that _she_
might never become so personal, so narrow. She was frivolous, worldly,
an amateur, a trifler, a frequenter of Beacon Street; her taking up
Verena Tarrant was only a kind of elderly, ridiculous doll-dressing:
this was the light in which Miss Chancellor had reason to believe that
it now suited Mrs. Farrinder to regard her! It was fortunate, perhaps,
that the misrepresentation was so gross; yet, none the less, tears of
wrath rose more than once to Olive's eyes when she reflected that this
particular wrong had been put upon her. Frivolous, worldly, Beacon
Street! She appealed to Verena to share in her pledge that the world
should know in due time how much of that sort of thing there was about
her. As I have already hinted, Verena at such moments quite rose to the
occasion; she had private pangs at committing herself to give the cold
shoulder to Beacon Street for ever; but she was now so completely in
Olive's hands that there was no sacrifice to which she would not have
consented in order to prove that her benefactress was not frivolous.

The matter of her coming to stay for so long