esence, with such an air of
power and manly prosperity and self-reliance--I doubt if any other
assembly in the world, undecorated by orders and uniforms, with no blazon
of rank, would have a greater air of distinction. Looking over it from a
landing in the great stairway that commanded vistas and ranges of the
lofty, brilliant apartments, vivified by the throng, which seemed
ennobled by the spacious splendor in which it moved, one would be
pardoned a feeling of national pride in the spectacle. I drew aside to
let a stately train of beauty and of fashion descend, and saw it sweep
through the hall, and enter the drawing-rooms, until it was lost in a sea
of shifting color. It was like a dream.

And the centre of all this charming plutocratic graciousness and beauty
was Margaret--Margaret and her handsome husband. Where did the New
Hampshire boy learn this simple dignity of bearing, this good-humored
cordiality without condescension, this easy air of the man of the world?
Was this the railway wrecker, the insurance manipulator, the familiar of
Uncle Jerry, the king of the lobby, the pride and the bugaboo of Wall
Street? Margaret was regnant. And how charmingly she received her guests!
How well I knew that half-imperious toss of the head, and the glance of
those level, large gray eyes, softened instantly, on recognition, into
the sweetest smile of welcome playing about the dimple and the expressive
mouth! What woman would not feel a little thrill of triumph? The world
was at her feet. Why was it, I wonder, as I stood there watching the
throng which saluted this queenly woman of the world, in an hour of
supreme social triumph, while the notes of the distant orchestra came
softly on the air, and the overpowering perfume of banks of flowers and
tropical plants--why was it that I thought of a fair, simple girl,
stirred with noble ideals, eager for the intellectual life, tender,
sympathetic, courageous? It was Margaret Debree--how often I had seen her
thus!--sitting on her little veranda, swinging her chip hat by the
string, glowing from some errand in which her heart had played a much
more important part than her purse. I caught the odor of the honeysuckle
that climbed on the porch, and I heard the note of the robin that nested
there.

"You seem to be in a brown study," said Carmen, who came up, leaning on
the arm of the Earl of Chisholm.

"I'm lost in admiration. You must make allowance, Miss Eschelle, for a
person from the