Mrs. Luna spoke with pride of the
manner in which he went through them; if he did not master his lessons,
he mastered his teachers, and she had the happy conviction that she gave
him every advantage. Ransom's delay was diplomatic, but at the end of
ten minutes he returned to the young ladies in Boston; he asked why,
with their aggressive programme, one hadn't begun to feel their onset,
why the echoes of Miss Tarrant's eloquence hadn't reached his ears.
Hadn't she come out yet in public? was she not coming to stir them up in
New York? He hoped she hadn't broken down.
"She didn't seem to break down last summer, at the Female Convention,"
Mrs. Luna replied. "Have you forgotten that too? Didn't I tell you of
the sensation she produced there, and of what I heard from Boston about
it? Do you mean to say I didn't give you that "Transcript," with the
report of her great speech? It was just before they sailed for Europe;
she went off with flying colours, in a blaze of fireworks." Ransom
protested that he had not heard this affair mentioned till that moment,
and then, when they compared dates, they found it had taken place just
after his last visit to Mrs. Luna. This, of course, gave her a chance to
say that he had treated her even worse than she supposed; it had been
her impression, at any rate, that they had talked together about
Verena's sudden bound into fame.
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