round
here.' And a brazen girl cried out: 'Shut yer mouth, Dick; the lady's got
to have some pleasure. Don't yer see, she's a-slummin'?'"

"It's very hard, I know," said the earl; "perhaps we are all on the wrong
track."

"Maybe. Mr. Henderson says that the world would get on better if
everybody minded his own business."

"I wish it were possible," the earl remarked, with an air of finishing
the topic. "I have just been up to Brandon, Mrs. Henderson. I fear that I
have seen the dear place for the last time."

"You don't mean that you are tired of America?"

"Not that. I shall never, even in thought, tire of Brandon."

"Yes, they are dear, good people."

"I thought Miss Forsythe--what a sweet, brave woman she is!--was looking
sad and weary."

"Oh, aunt won't do anything, or take an interest in anything. She just
stays there. I've tried in vain to get her here. Do you know"--and she
turned upon the earl a look of the old playfulness--"she doesn't quite
approve of me."

"Oh," he replied, hesitating a little--"I think, Mrs. Henderson, that her
heart is bound up in you. It isn't for me to say that you haven't a truer
friend in the world."

"Yes, I know. If I'd only--" and she stopped, with a petulant look on her
fair face--"well, it doesn't matter. She is a dear soul."

"I--suppose," said the earl, rising, "we shall see you again on the other
side?"

"Perhaps," with a smile. Could anything be more commonplace than such a
parting? Good-by, I shall see you tomorrow or next year, or in the next
world. Hail and farewell! That is the common experience. But, oh, the
bitterness of it to many a soul!

It is quite possible that when the Earl of Chisholm said good-by, with an
air of finality, Margaret felt that another part of her life was closed.
He was not in any way an extraordinary person, he was not a very rich
peer, probably with his modesty and conscientiousness, and devotion to
the ordinary duties of his station, he would never attain high rank in
the government. Yet no one could be long with him without apprehending
that his life was on a high plane. It was with a little irritation that
Margaret recognized this, and remembered, with a twinge of conscience,
that it was upon that plane that her life once traveled. The time had
been when the more important thing to her was the world of ideas, of
books, of intellectual life, of passionate sympathy with the fortunes of
humanity, of deepest interest in all the new