Goodness! there was no living with him after his
visit to Brandon. Do you know, Margaret, that I think you are just a
little bit sly?"

"I don't know what you mean," said Margaret, looking offended.

"Dear, I don't blame you," said the impulsive creature, wheeling short
round and coming close to Margaret. "I'd kiss you this minute if we were
not in the public road."

When Henderson came, Margaret's world was full; no desire was
ungratified. He experienced a little relief when she did not bother him
about his business nor inquire into his operations with Hollowell, and he
fancied that she was getting to accept the world as Carmen accepted it.
There had been moments since his marriage when he feared that Margaret's
scruples would interfere with his career, but never a moment when he had
doubted that her love for him would be superior to any solicitations from
others. Carmen, who knew him like a book, would have said that the model
wife for Henderson would be a woman devoted to him and to his interests,
and not too scrupulous. A wife is a torment, if you can't feel at ease
with her.

"If there were only a French fleet in the harbor, dear," said Margaret
one day, "I should feel that I had quite taken up the life of my
great-great-grandmother."

They were sailing in Hollowell's yacht, in which Uncle Jerry had brought
his family round from New York. He hated the water, but Mrs. Hollowell
and the children doted on the sea, he said.

"Wouldn't the torpedo station make up for it?" Henderson asked.

"Hardly. But it shows the change of a hundred years. Only, isn't it odd,
this personal dropping back into an old situation? I wonder what she was
like?"

"The accounts say she was the belle of Newport. I suppose Newport has a
belle once in a hundred years. The time has come round. But I confess I
don't miss the French fleet," replied Henderson, with a look of love that
thrilled Margaret through and through.

"But you would have been an officer on the fleet, and I should have
fallen in love with you. Ah, well, it is better as it is."

And it was better. The days went by without a cloud. Even after Henderson
had gone, the prosperity of life filled her heart more and more.

"She might have been like me," Carmen said to herself, "if she had only
started right; but it is so hard to get rid of a New England conscience."

When Margaret stayed in her room, one morning, to write a long-postponed
letter to her aunt, she discovered