they easily did conclude, that before long they should see
Lansing Harold back again, and established somewhere with his wife as
docilely as though he had never been away; this had happened in a
number of cases when the separation had been even longer. Europe was
full of American wives spending winters here and summers there, wives
whose husbands had remained at home; it might almost be called an
American method for infusing freshness into the matrimonial atmosphere,
for of course they would be doubly glad to see each other, all these
parted ones, when the travels should at last be over, and the
hearth-fire re-established again. In this instance it was the husband
who had gone. And in the mean while how well-ordered was the life led by
Mrs. Harold! there was not, there never could be, a breath of reproach
or comment concerning her.

Thus the world. And the world's opinion had been Winthrop's in so far
that he had fully shared its belief in the irreproachableness of
Margaret's life as regards what is sometimes defined as "a taste for
society," or, arranged in another form, as "a love of gayety," or, with
more frankness, "a love of admiration." Of course he had approved of
this. But he had not realized how deeply he had approved of it
(underneath disapprovals of another sort) until now, when, like a
thunder-clap, the revelation had come upon him: he and the world had
been mistaken! This Margaret, with her fair calm face, with her
studiedly quiet life, had a capacity for the profoundest deceptions; she
had deceived them all without the slightest difficulty, she was
deceiving them now. The very completeness with which she had disguised
her liking for Lucian showed what an actress she must be; if she had
allowed her liking to come out in a natural way, if she had even let it
be known that she intended to see him again, instead of going through
that form of bidding him good-by before them all, it would have had
another aspect; the present one, given the manner she had always
maintained with him in public, and given the fact that she was the most
unimpulsive of women, was ominous. In the moment of discovery it had
given him a sick feeling,--he had been so sure of her!

The sick feeling had come back often during the two weeks that followed.
Each time he had taken himself sharply to task for caring so much. But
it was because he had cared that he had left East Angels.

As he sat there in the wood, staring at Madam Giron's ho