as allowed him. Carmen, who showed to
Margaret only her best side--she would have been wise to exhibit no other
to Henderson, but women of her nature are apt to cheapen themselves with
men--seemed an embodiment of that graceful gayety and fascinating
worldliness which make the world agreeable.

One morning, a few days after the Indian function, Margaret was alone in
her own cozy sitting-room. Nothing was wanting that luxury could suggest
to make it in harmony with a beautiful woman, nothing that did not
flatter and please, or nurse, perhaps, a personal sense of beauty, and
impart that glow of satisfaction which comes when the senses are adroitly
ministered to. Margaret had been in a mood that morning to pay extreme
attention to her toilet. The result was the perfection of simplicity, of
freshness, of maiden purity, enhanced by the touch of art. As she
surveyed herself in the pier-glass, and noted the refined lines of the
morning-gown which draped but did not conceal the more exquisite lines of
her figure, and adjusted a rose in her bosom, she did not feel like a
Puritan, and, although she may not have noted the fact, she did not look
like one. It was not a look of vanity that she threw into the mirror, or
of special self-consciousness; in her toilet she had obeyed only her
instinct (that infallible guide in a woman of refinement), and if she was
conscious of any emotion, it was of the stirring within her of the
deepest womanly nature.

In fact, she was restless. She flung herself into an easy-chair before
the fire, and took up a novel. It was a novel with a religious problem.
In vain she tried to be interested in it. At home she would have absorbed
it eagerly; they would have discussed it; the doubts and suggestions in
it would have assumed the deepest personal importance. It might have made
an era in her thoughtful country life. Here it did not so appeal to her;
it seemed unreal and shadowy in a life that had so much more of action
than of reflection in it. It was a life fascinating and exciting, and
profoundly unsatisfactory. Yet, after all, it was more really life than
that placid vegetation in the country. She felt that in the whirl of only
a few days of it--operas, receptions, teas, readings, dances, dinners,
where everybody sparkled with a bewildering brilliancy, and yet from
which one brought away nothing but a sense of strain; such gallantry,
such compliments, such an easy tossing about of every topic under heav