He had seen Tarrant, or his equivalent, often before; he had
"whipped" him, as he believed, controversially, again and again, at
political meetings in blighted Southern towns, during the horrible
period of reconstruction. If Mrs. Farrinder had looked at Verena Tarrant
as if she were a mountebank, there was some excuse for it, inasmuch as
the girl made much the same impression on Basil Ransom. He had never
seen such an odd mixture of elements; she had the sweetest, most
unworldly face, and yet, with it, an air of being on exhibition, of
belonging to a troupe, of living in the gaslight, which pervaded even
the details of her dress, fashioned evidently with an attempt at the
histrionic. If she had produced a pair of castanets or a tambourine, he
felt that such accessories would have been quite in keeping.
Little Doctor Prance, with her hard good sense, had noted that she was
anaemic, and had intimated that she was a deceiver. The value of her
performance was yet to be proved, but she was certainly very pale, white
as women are who have that shade of red hair; they look as if their
blood had gone into it. There was, however, something rich in the
fairness of this young lady; she was strong and supple, there was colour
in her lips and eyes, and her tresses, gathered into a complicated coil,
seemed to glow with the brightness of her nature.
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