Miss Birdseye had been watching her blue car, the advance of which was temporarily obstructed. At this, she transferred her eyes to him, gazing at him solemnly out of the pervasive window of her spectacles. "Well, I shouldn't wonder if she did! Yes, that will be a good thing. I don't see how you can help being a good deal shaken by her. She has acted on so many."
"I see: no doubt she will act on me." Then it occurred to Ransom to add: "By the way, Miss Birdseye, perhaps you will be so kind as not to mention this meeting of ours to my cousin, in case of your seeing her again. I have a perfectly good conscience in not calling upon her, but I shouldn't like her to think that I announced my slighting intention all over the town. I don't want to offend her, and she had better not know that I have been in Boston. If you don't tell her, no one else will."
"Do you wish me to conceal——?" murmured Miss Birdseye, panting a little.
"No, I don't want you to conceal anything. I only want you to let this incident pass—to say nothing."
"Well, I never did anything of that kind."
"Of what kind?" Ransom was half vexed, half touched by her inability to enter into his point of view, and her resistance made him hold to his idea the more. "It is very simple, what I ask of you. You are under no obligation to tell Miss Chancellor everything that happens to you, are you?"
His request seemed still something of a shock to the poor old lady's candour. "Well, I see her very often, and we talk a great deal. And then—won't Verena tell her?"
"I have thought of that—but I hope not."
"She tells her most everything. Their union is so close."
"She won't want her to be wounded," Ransom said ingeniously.