o marry into Exeter Hall and that sort of thing. That is what
she means--dear mamma. Are you High-Church or evangelical?" she asked,
after a moment, turning to Margaret?

Margaret explained that she was neither.

"Well, I am High-Church, and Mr. Lyon is evangelical-Church evangelical.
There couldn't be any happiness, you know, without harmony in religious
belief."

"I should think not," said Margaret, now quite recovering herself. "It
must be a matter of great anxiety to you here."

Carmen was quick to note the change of tone, and her face beamed with
merriment as she rose.

"What nonsense I've been talking! I did not intend to go into such deep
things. You must not mind what I said about Mr.--(a little pause to read
Margaret's face)--Mr. Lyon. We esteem him as much as you do. How charming
you are looking this morning! I wish I had your secret of not letting
this life tell on one." And she was gone in a shower of compliments and
smiles and caressing ways. She had found out what she came to find out.
Mr. Henderson needs watching, she said to herself.

The interview, as Margaret thought it over, was amusing, but it did not
raise her spirits. Was everybody worldly and shallow? Was this the sort
of woman whom Mr. Henderson fancied? Was Mr. Henderson the sort of man to
whom such a woman would be attracted?

IX

It was a dinner party in one of the up-town houses--palaces--that begin
to repeat in size, spaciousness of apartments, and decoration the
splendor of the Medicean merchant princes. It is the penalty that we pay
for the freedom of republican opportunity that some must be very rich.
This is the logical outcome of the open chance for everybody to be rich
--and it is the surest way to distinction. In a free country the course
must be run, and it is by the accumulation of great wealth that one can
get beyond anxiety, and be at liberty to indulge in republican
simplicity.

Margaret and Miss Arbuser were ushered in through a double row of
servants in livery--shortclothes and stockings--in decorous vacuity--an
array necessary to bring into relief the naturalness and simplicity of
the entertainers. Vulgarity, one can see, consists in making one's self a
part of the display of wealth: the thing to be attained is personal
simplicity on a background of the richest ostentation. It is difficult to
attain this, and theory says that it takes three generations for a man to
separate himself thus from his display. It wa