If people watched her a good deal, she also
returned their contemplation, and her charming eyes had several times
encountered those of Basil Ransom. But they wandered mainly in the
direction of Mrs. Farrinder--they lingered upon the serene solidity of
the great oratress. It was easy to see that the girl admired this
beneficent woman, and felt it a privilege to be near her. It was
apparent, indeed, that she was excited by the company in which she found
herself; a fact to be explained by a reference to that recent period of
exile in the West, of which we have had a hint, and in consequence of
which the present occasion may have seemed to her a return to
intellectual life. Ransom secretly wished that his cousin--since fate
was to reserve for him a cousin in Boston--had been more like that.
By this time a certain agitation was perceptible; several ladies,
impatient of vain delay, had left their places, to appeal personally to
Mrs. Farrinder, who was presently surrounded with sympathetic
remonstrants. Miss Birdseye had given her up; it had been enough for
Miss Birdseye that she should have said, when pressed (so far as her
hostess, muffled in laxity, could press) on the subject of the general
expectation, that she could only deliver her message to an audience
which she felt to be partially hostile.
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