" This had been mere maiden flippancy; she
had not known the meaning of what she said. Though she had grown up
among people who took for granted all sorts of queer laxities, she had
kept the consummate innocence of the American girl, that innocence which
was the greatest of all, for it had survived the abolition of walls and
locks; and of the various remarks that had dropped from Verena
expressing this quality that startling observation certainly expressed
it most. It implied, at any rate, that unions of some kind or other had
her approval, and did not exclude the dangers that might arise from
encounters with young men in search of sensations.
XVI
Mr. Pardon, as Olive observed, was a little out of this combination; but
he was not a person to allow himself to droop. He came and seated
himself by Miss Chancellor and broached a literary subject; he asked her
if she were following any of the current "serials" in the magazines. On
her telling him that she never followed anything of that sort, he
undertook a defence of the serial system, which she presently reminded
him that she had not attacked. He was not discouraged by this retort,
but glided gracefully off to the question of Mount Desert; conversation
on some subject or other being evidently a necessity of his nature.
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