ragged-school that she visited, of the hospital in which she was a
manager, of the mission chapel. The next Sunday would be Easter, and she
thought of a hundred ways in which she could make it brighter for so many
of the unfortunates. Her heart was opened to the world, and looking
across to Henderson, who was deep in the morning paper, she said, with a
wife's unblushing effrontery, "Dearest, how handsome you are!"

The home life took itself up again easily and smoothly in Washington
Square. Did there ever come a moment of reflection as to the nature of
this prosperity which was altogether so absorbing and agreeable? If it
came, did it give any doubts and raise any of the old questions that used
to be discussed at Brandon? Wasn't it the use that people made of money,
after all, that was the real test? She did not like Hollowell, but on
acquaintance he was not the monster that he had appeared to her in the
newspapers. She was perplexed now and then by her husband's business, but
did it differ from that of other men she had known, except that it was on
a larger scale? And how much good could be done with money!

On Easter morning, when Margaret returned from early service, to which
she had gone alone, she found upon her dressing-table a note addressed to
"My Wife," and in it a check for a large sum to her order, and a card, on
which was written, "For Margaret's Easter Charities." Flushed with
pleasure, she ran to meet her husband on the landing as he was descending
to breakfast, threw her arms about his neck, and, with tears in her eyes,
cried, "Dearest, how good you are!"

It is such a good and prosperous generation.

XIV

Our lives are largely made up of the things we do not have. In May, the
time of the apple blossoms--just a year from the swift wooing of
Margaret--Miss Forsythe received a letter from John Lyon. It was in a
mourning envelope. The Earl of Chisholm was dead, and John Lyon was Earl
of Chisholm. The information was briefly conveyed, but with an air of
profound sorrow. The letter spoke of the change that this loss brought to
his own life, and the new duties laid upon him, which would confine him
more closely to England. It also contained congratulations--which
circumstances had delayed--upon Mrs. Henderson's marriage, and a simple
wish for her happiness. The letter was longer than it need have been for
these purposes; it seemed to love to dwell upon the little visit to
Brandon and the circle of fr