things an impecunious count! But he is amusing."

"But what do you care for money?" asked Margaret, by way of testing
Carmen's motives.

"Nothing, my dear. But deliver me from a husband who is poor; he would
certainly be a tyrant. Besides, if I ever marry, it will be with an
American."

"But suppose you fall in love with a poor man?"

"That would be against my principles. Never fall below your ideals--that
is what I heard a speaker say at the Town and Country Club, and that is
my notion. There is no safety for you if you lose your principles."

"That depends upon what they are," said Margaret, in the same bantering
tone.

"That sounds like good Mr. Lyon. I suspect he thought I hadn't any.
Mamma said I tried to shock him; but he shocked me. Do you think you
could live with such a man twenty-four hours, even if he had his crown
on?"

"I can imagine a great deal worse husbands than the Earl of Chisholm."

"Well, I haven't any imagination."

There was no reading that day nor the next. In the morning there was a
drive with the ponies through town, in the afternoon in the carriage
by the sea, with a couple of receptions, the five o'clock tea, with
its chatter, and in the evening a dinner party for Margaret. One day
sufficed to launch her, and there-after Carmen had only admiration
for the unflagging spirit which Margaret displayed. "If you were only
unmarried," she said, "what larks we could have!" Margaret looked grave
at this, but only for a moment, for she well knew that she could not
please her husband better than by enjoying the season to the full. He
never criticised her for taking the world as it is; and she confessed to
herself that life went very pleasantly in a house where there were
never any questions raised about duties. The really serious thought in
Carmen's mind was that perhaps after all a woman had no real freedom
until she was married. And she began to be interested in Margaret's
enjoyment of the world.

It was not, after all, a new world, only newly arranged, like another
scene in the same play. The actors, who came and went, were for the most
part the acquaintances of the Washington winter, and the callers and
diners and opera-goers and charity managers of the city. In these days
Margaret was quite at home with the old set: the British Minister,
the Belgian, the French, the Spanish, the Mexican, the German, and the
Italian, with their families and attaches--nothing was wanting, not even
the