And as for our four
fearful years of slaughter, of course, you won't deny that there the
ladies were the great motive power. The Abolitionists brought it on, and
were not the Abolitionists principally females? Who was that celebrity
that was mentioned last night?--Eliza P. Moseley. I regard Eliza as the
cause of the biggest war of which history preserves the record."
Basil Ransom enjoyed his humour the more because Verena appeared to
enjoy it; and the look with which she replied to him, at the end of this
little tirade, "Why, sir, you ought to take the platform too; we might
go round together as poison and antidote!"--this made him feel that he
had convinced her, for the moment, quite as much as it was important he
should. In Verena's face, however, it lasted but an instant--an instant
after she had glanced at Olive Chancellor, who, with her eyes fixed
intently on the ground (a look she was to learn to know so well), had a
strange expression. The girl slowly got up; she felt that she must go.
She guessed Miss Chancellor didn't like this handsome joker (it was so
that Basil Ransom struck her); and it was impressed upon her ("in time,"
as she thought) that her new friend would be more serious even than she
about the woman-question, serious as she had hitherto believed herself
to be.
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