that he came to say good-by to
Margaret before his return.

I cannot imagine anything more uncomfortable for an old lover than a
meeting of this sort; but I suppose the honest fellow could not resist
the inclination to see Margaret once more. I dare say she had a little
flutter of pride in receiving him, in her consciousness of the change in
herself into a wider experience of the world. And she may have been a
little chagrined that he was not apparently more impressed by her
surroundings, nor noticed the change in herself, but met her upon the
ground of simple sincerity where they had once stood. What he tried to
see, what she felt he was trying to see, was not the beautiful woman
about whose charm and hospitality the town talked, but the girl he had
loved in the old days.

He talked a little, a very little, about himself and his work in England,
and a great deal about what had interested him here on his second visit,
the social drift, the politics, the organized charities; and as he
talked, Margaret was conscious how little the world in which she lived
seemed to interest him; how little importance he attached to it. And she
saw, as in a momentary vision of herself, that the things that once
absorbed her and stirred her sympathies were now measurably indifferent
to her. Book after book which he casually mentioned, as showing the drift
of the age, and profoundly affecting modern thought, she knew only by
name. "I guess," said Carmen, afterwards, when Margaret spoke of the
earl's conversation, "that he is one of those who are trying to live in
the spirit--what do they call it?--care for things of the mind."

"You are doing a noble work," he said, "in your Palace of Industry."

"Yes, it is very well managed," Margaret replied; "but it is uphill work,
the poor are so ungrateful for charity."

"Perhaps nobody, Mrs. Henderson, likes to be treated as an object of
charity."

"Well, work isn't what they want when we give it, and they'd rather live
in the dirt than in clean apartments."

"Many of them don't know any better, and a good many of our poor resent
condescension."

"Yes," said Margaret, with warmth; "they are getting to demand things as
their right, and they are insolent. The last time I drove down in that
quarter I was insulted by their manner. What are you going to do with
such people? One big fellow who was leaning against a lamp-post growled,
'You'd better stay in your own palace, miss, and not come prying