Page:The Bostonians (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886).djvu/436

 Tarrant or Miss Chancellor would make her appearance. 'Every seat in the Hall is sold; the crowd is expected to be immense. When our Boston public does take an idea!' Mr. Pardon exclaimed.

Ransom only wanted to get away, and in order to facilitate his release by implying that in such a case he should see her again, he said to Mrs. Luna, rather hypocritically, from the threshold, 'You had really better come to-night.'

'I am not like the Boston public—I don't take an idea!' she replied.

'Do you mean to say you are not going?' cried Mr. Pardon, with widely-open eyes, clapping his hand again to his pocket. 'Don't you regard her as a wonderful genius?'

Mrs. Luna was sorely tried, and the vexation of seeing Ransom slip away from her with his thoughts visibly on Verena, leaving her face to face with the odious newspaperman, whose presence made passionate protest impossible—the annoyance of seeing everything and every one mock at her and fail to compensate her was such that she lost her head, while rashness leaped to her lips and jerked out the answer—'No indeed; I think her a vulgar idiot!'

'Ah, madam, I should never permit myself to print that!' Ransom heard Mr. Pardon rejoin, reproachfully, as he dropped the portière of the drawing-room.