ity, an image half effaced--when he learned that she had come back
to America. He had taken a wrong impression from what Mrs. Luna said,
nearly a year before, about her sister's visit to Europe; he had
supposed it was to be a long absence, that Miss Chancellor wanted
perhaps to get the little prophetess away from her parents, possibly
even away from some amorous entanglement. Then, no doubt, they wanted to
study up the woman-question with the facilities that Europe would offer;
he didn't know much about Europe, but he had an idea that it was a great
place for facilities. His knowledge of Miss Chancellor's departure,
accompanied by her young companion, had checked at the time, on Ransom's
part, a certain habit of idle but none the less entertaining retrospect.
His life, on the whole, had not been rich in episode, and that little
chapter of his visit to his queer, clever, capricious cousin, with his
evening at Miss Birdseye's, and his glimpse, repeated on the morrow, of
the strange, beautiful, ridiculous, red-haired young _improvisatrice_,
unrolled itself in his memory like a page of interesting fiction. The
page seemed to fade, however, when he heard that the two girls had gone,
for an indefinite time, to unknown lands; this carried them out of his
range, spoiled the perspective, diminished their actuality; so that for
several months past, with his increase of anxiety about his own affairs,
and the low pitch of his spirits, he had not thought at all about Verena
Tarrant. The fact that she was once more in Boston, with a certain
contiguity that it seemed to imply between Boston and New York,
presented itself now as important and agreeable. He was conscious that
this was rather an anomaly, and his consciousness made him, had already
made him, dissimulate slightly. He did not pick up his hat to go; he sat
in his chair taking his chance of the tax which Mrs. Luna might lay upon
his urbanity. He remembered that he had not made, as yet, any very eager
inquiry about Newton, who at this late hour had succumbed to the only
influence that tames the untamable and was sleeping the sleep of
childhood, if not of innocence. Ransom repaired his neglect in a manner
which elicited the most copious response from his hostess. The boy had
had a good many tutors since Ransom gave him up, and it could not be
said that his education languished. Mrs. Luna spoke with pride of the
manner in which he went through them; if he did not master his lessons