er. 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 indignant at herself as she thought of it. How odd it was!
Her privacy had been invaded. The even tenor of her life had been broken.
Henceforth would she be less or more sensitive to the suggestion of love,
to the allurements of ambition? Margaret tried, in accordance with her
nature, to be sincere with herself.

After all, what nonsense it was! Nothing really had happened. A stranger
of a few weeks before had declared himself. She did not love him; he was
no more to her than any other man. It was a common occurrence. Her
judgment accorded with her feeling in what she had done. How was she to
know that she had made a mistake, if mistake it was? How was she to know
that this hour was a crisis in her life? Surely the little tumult would
pass; surely the little whisper of worldliness could not disturb her
ideals. But all the power of exclusion in her mind could not exclude the
returning thought of what might have been if she had loved him. Alas! in
that moment was born in her heart something that would make the idea of
love less simple than it had been in her mind. She was heart-free, but
her nature was too deep not to be profoundly affected by this experience.

Looking back upon this afternoon in the light of after-years, she
probably could not feel--no one could say--that she had done wrong. How
was she to tell? Why is it that to do the right thing is often to make
the mistake of a life? Nothing could have been nobler than for Margaret
indignantly to put aside a temptation that her heart told her was
unworthy. And yet if she had yielded to it?

I ought to ask pardon, perhaps, for dwelling upon a thing so slight as
the entrance of a thought in a woman's life. For