said Henderson, rising, "we mustn't quarrel about an
Englishman--such old friends."

"Yes, we are very old friends." The girl rose also, and gave him her
hand. "Perhaps that's the worst of it. If I should lose your esteem I
should go into a convent." She dropped his hand, and snatching a bunch of
violets from the table, fixed them in his button-hole, looking up in his
face with vestal sweetness. "You are not offended?"

"Not a bit; not the least in the world," said Henderson, heartily,
patting the hand that still lingered upon his lapel.

When he had gone, Carmen sank into her chair with a gesture of vexation,
and there were hard lines in her sweet face. "What an insensible stick!"
Then she ran up-stairs to her mother, who sat in her room reading one of
the town-weeklies, into which some elderly ladies look for something to
condemn.

"Well?"

"Such a stupid evening! He is just absorbed in that girl from Brandon. I
told him we were going abroad."

"Going abroad! You are crazy, child. New York is forty times as amusing."

"And forty times as tiresome. I'm sick of it. Mamma, don't you think it
would be only civil to ask Mr. Lyon to a quiet dinner before he goes?"

"Certainly. That is what I said the other day. I thought you--"

"Yes, I was ill-natured then. But I want to please you. And we really
ought to be civil."

One day is so like another in the city. Every day something new, and, the
new the same thing over again. And always the expectation that it will be
different tomorrow. Nothing is so tiresome as a kaleidoscope, though it
never repeats itself.

Fortunately there are two pursuits that never pall--making money and
making love.

Henderson had a new object in life, though the new one did not sensibly
divert him from the old; it rather threw a charming light over it, and
made the possibilities of it more attractive. In all his schemes he found
the thought of Margaret entering. Why should it not have been Carmen? he
sometimes thought. She thoroughly understood him. She would never stand
in the way of his most daring ambitions with any scruples. Her conscience
would never nag his. She would be ambitious for a career for him. Would
she care for him or the career? How clever she was! And affectionate? She
would be if she had a heart.

He was not balancing the two. What man ever does, in fact? It was simply
because Margaret had a heart that he loved her, that she seemed necessary
to him. He was quite capab