ty and family could raise would melt away in the glow of a real
passion. And he wondered for a moment if American girls were not
"calculating"--a word to which he had learned over here to attach a new
and comical meaning.

V

The afternoon after this conversation Miss Forsythe was sitting reading
in her favorite window-seat when Mr. Lyon was announced. Margaret was
at her school. There was nothing un usual in this afternoon call; Mr.
Lyon's visits had become frequent and informal; but Miss Forsythe had a
nervous presentiment that something important was to happen, that showed
itself in her greeting, and which was perhaps caught from a certain new
diffidence in his manner.

Perhaps the maiden lady preserves more than any other this
sensitiveness, inborn in women, to the approach of the critical moment
in the affairs of the heart. The day may some time be past when she--is
sensitive for herself--philosophers say otherwise--but she is easily
put in a flutter by the affair of another. Perhaps this is because the
negative (as we say in these days) which takes impressions retains all
its delicacy from the fact that none of them have ever been developed,
and perhaps it is a wise provision of nature that age in a heart
unsatisfied should awaken lively apprehensive curiosity and sympathy
about the manifestation of the tender passion in others. It certainly
is a note of the kindliness and charity of the maiden mind that its
sympathies are so apt to be most strongly excited in the success of the
wooer. This interest may be quite separable from the common feminine
desire to make a match whenever there is the least chance of it. Miss
Forsythe was not a match-maker, but Margaret herself would not have been
more embarrassed than she was at the beginning of this interview.

When Mr. Lyon was seated she made the book she had in her hand the
excuse for beginning a talk about the confidence young novelists seem
to have in their ability to upset the Christian religion by a fictitious
representation of life, but her visitor was too preoccupied to join in
it. He rose and stood leaning his arm upon the mantel-piece, and looking
into the fire, and said, abruptly, at last:

"I called to see you, Miss Forsythe, to--to consult you about your
niece."

"About her career?" asked Miss Forsythe, with a nervous consciousness of
falsehood.

"Yes, about her career; that is, in a way," turning towards her with a
little smile.

"Yes?"

"