womanly
pain. What an awful thing it was! Why couldn't he have seen? A man had
said he loved her. Perhaps it was not in her to love any one. Perhaps
she should live on and on like her aunt Forsythe. Well, it was over; and
Margaret roused herself as her aunt entered the room.

"Has Mr. Lyon been here?"

"Yes; he has just gone. He was so sorry not to see you and say good-by.
He left ever so many messages for you."

"And" (Margaret was moving as if to go) "did he say nothing--nothing to
you?"

"Oh yes, he said a great deal," answered this accomplished hypocrite,
looking frankly in her aunt's eyes. "He said how delightful his visit
had been, and how sorry he was to go."

"And nothing else, Margaret?"

"Oh yes; he said he was going to Washington." And the girl was gone from
the room.

VI

Margaret hastened to her chamber. Was the air oppressive? She opened the
window and sat down by it. A soft south wind was blowing, eating away
the remaining patches of snow; the sky was full of fleecy clouds. Where
do these days come from in January? Why should nature be in a melting
mood? Margaret instinctively would have preferred a wild storm,
violence, anything but this elemental languor. Her emotion was
incredible to herself.

It was only an incident. It had all happened in a moment, and it was
over. But it was the first of the kind in a woman's life. The thrilling,
mysterious word had been dropped into a woman's heart. Hereafter she
would be changed. She never again would be as she was before. Would her
heart be hardened or softened by the experience? She did not love him;
that was clear. She had done right; that was clear. But he had said he
loved her. Unwittingly she was following him in her thought. She had
rejected plain John Lyon, amiable, intelligent, unselfish, kindly,
deferential. She had rejected also the Earl of Chisholm, a conspicuous
position, an honorable family, luxury, a great opportunity in life. It
came to the girl in a flash. She moved nervously in her chair. She put
down the thought as unworthy of her. But she had entertained it for a
moment. In that second, ambition had entered the girl's soul. She had
a glimpse of her own nature that seemed new to her. Was this, then,
the meaning of her restlessness, of her charitable activities, of her
unconfessed dreams of some career? Ambition had entered her soul in
a definite form. She expelled it. It would come again in some form or
other. She was indignan