"
"If you had seen her more, I shouldn't be afraid! Fancy your wanting to
pack me off to Boston!" his hostess went on. "I am in no hurry to stay
with Olive again; besides, that girl takes up the whole house. You had
better go there yourself."
"I should like nothing better," said Ransom.
"Perhaps you would like me to ask Verena to spend a month with me--it
might be a way of attracting you to the house," Adeline went on, in the
tone of exuberant provocation.
Ransom was on the point of replying that it would be a better way than
any other, but he checked himself in time; he had never yet, even in
joke, made so crude, so rude a speech to a lady. You only knew when he
was joking with women by his super-added civility. "I beg you to believe
there is nothing I would do for any woman in the world that I wouldn't
do for you," he said, bending, for the last time, over Mrs. Luna's plump
hand.
"I shall remember that and keep you up to it!" she cried after him, as
he went. But even with this rather lively exchange of vows he felt that
he had got off rather easily. He walked slowly up Fifth Avenue, into
which, out of Adeline's cross-street, he had turned, by the light of a
fine winter moon; and at every corner he stopped a minute, lingered in
meditation, while he exhaled a soft, vague sigh.
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