rying on his philanthropic plans--a most unworldly
note. "I used to think," she had said, when confiding what she had done
to Margaret, "that you would make a perfect missionary countess, but you
have done better, my dear, and taken up a much more difficult work among
us fashionable sinners. Do you know," she went on, "that I feel a great
deal less worldly than I used to?"

Margaret wrote a most amusing account of this interview, and added that
Carmen was really very good-hearted, and not half as worldly-minded as
she pretended to be; an opinion with which Miss Forsythe did not at all
agree. She had spent a fortnight with Margaret after Easter, and she came
back in a dubious frame of mind. Margaret's growing intimacy with Carmen
was one of the sources of her uneasiness. They appeared to be more and
more companionable, although Margaret's clear perception of character
made her estimate of Carmen very nearly correct. But the fact remained
that she found her company interesting. Whether the girl tried to
astonish the country aunt, or whether she was so thoroughly a child of
her day as to lack certain moral perceptions, I do not know, but her
candid conversation greatly shocked Miss Forsythe.

"Margaret," she said one day, in one of her apparent bursts of
confidence, "seems to have had such a different start in life from mine.
Sometimes, Miss Forsythe, she puzzles me. I never saw anybody so much in
love as she is with Mr. Henderson; she doesn't simply love him, she is in
love with him. I don't wonder she is fond of him--any woman might be
that--but, do you know, she actually believes in him."

"Why shouldn't she believe in him?" exclaimed Miss Forsythe, in
astonishment.

"Oh, of course, in a way," the girl went on. "I like Mr. Henderson--I
like him very much--but I don't believe in him. It isn't the way now to
believe in anybody very much. We don't do it, and I think we get along
just as well--and better. Don't you think it's nicer not to have any
deceptions?"

Miss Forsythe was too much stunned to make any reply. It seemed to her
that the bottom had fallen out of society.

"Do you think Mr. Henderson believes in people?" the girl persisted.

"If he does not he isn't much of a man. If people don't believe in each
other, society is going to pieces. I am astonished at such a tone from a
woman."

"Oh, it isn't any tone in me, my dear Miss Forsythe," Carmen continued,
sweetly. "Society is a great deal pleasanter when y