of the Good and the True!
Behold how vain are all the triumphs of this world! see the result of the
worship of Mammon! My friends, the age is materialized, a spirit of
worldliness is abroad; be vigilant, lest the deceitfulness of riches send
your souls to perdition. And the plain country people thanked God for
such a warning, and the country girl dreamed of Margaret's career, and
the country boy studied the ways of Henderson's success, and resolved
that he, too, would seek his fortune in this bad metropolis.

The, Hendersons were important people. It was impossible that a knowledge
of their importance should not have a reflex influence upon Margaret.
Could it be otherwise than that gradually the fineness of her
discrimination should be dulled by the almost universal public consent in
the methods by which Henderson had achieved his position, and that in
time she should come to regard adverse judgment as the result of envy?
Henderson himself was under less illusion; the world was about what he
had taken it for, only a little worse--more gullible, and with less
principle. Carmen had mocked at Margaret's belief in Henderson. It is
certainly a pitiful outcome that Margaret, with her naturally believing
nature, should in the end have had a less clear perception of what was
right and wrong than Henderson himself. Yet Henderson would not have
shrunk, any more than Carmen would, from any course necessary to his
ends, while Margaret would have shrunk from many things; but in absolute
worldliness, in devotion to it, the time had come when Henderson felt
that his Puritan wife was no restraint upon him. It was this that broke
gentle Miss Forsythe's heart when she came fully to realize it.

I said that the world was at Margaret's feet. Was it? How many worlds are
there, and does one ever, except by birth (in a republic), conquer them
all? Truth to say, there were penetralia in New York society concerning
which this successful woman was uneasy in her heart. There were people
who had accepted her invitations, to whose houses she had been, who had a
dozen ways of making her feel that she was not of them. These people--I
suppose that if two castaways landed naked on a desert island, one of
them would instantly be the ancien regime--had spoken of Mrs. Henderson
and her ambition to the Earl of Chisholm in a way that pained him. They
graciously assumed that he, as one of the elect, would understand them.
It was therefore with a heavy heart