"
"Do you mean the law-courts? Every one has got some profession over
here! Are you very ambitious? You look as if you were."
"Yes, very," Basil Ransom replied, with a smile, and the curious
feminine softness with which Southern gentlemen enunciate that adverb.
Mrs. Luna explained that she had been living in Europe for several
years--ever since her husband died--but had come home a month before,
come home with her little boy, the only thing she had in the world, and
was paying a visit to her sister, who, of course, was the nearest thing
after the child. "But it isn't the same," she said. "Olive and I
disagree so much."
"While you and your little boy don't," the young man remarked.
"Oh no, I never differ from Newton!" And Mrs. Luna added that now she
was back she didn't know what she should do. That was the worst of
coming back; it was like being born again, at one's age--one had to
begin life afresh. One didn't even know what one had come back for.
There were people who wanted one to spend the winter in Boston; but she
couldn't stand that--she knew, at least, what she had not come back for.
Perhaps she should take a house in Washington; did he ever hear of that
little place? They had invented it while she was away.
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