the will.

The next day Mr. Henderson left his card and a basket of roses. Mr. Lyon
called. It was a constrained visit. Margaret was cordially civil, and I
fancied that Mr. Lyon would have been more content if she had been less
so. If he were a lover, there was little to please him in the exchange
of the commonplaces of the day.

"Yes," he was saying to my wife, "perhaps I shall have to change my mind
about the simplicity of your American life. It is much the same in New
York and London. It is only a question of more or less sophistication."

"Mr. Henderson tells us," said my wife, "that you knew the Eschelles in
London."

"Yes. Miss Eschelle almost had a career there last season."

"Why almost?"

"Well--you will pardon me--one needs for success in these days to be not
only very clever, but equally daring. It is every day more difficult to
make a sensation."

"I thought her, across the house," Margaret said, "very pretty and
attractive. I did not know you were so satirical, Mr. Lyon. Do you mean
that one must be more daring, as you call it, in London than in New
York?"

"I hope it will not hurt your national pride, Miss Debree, if I say that
there is always the greater competition in the larger market."

"Oh, my pride," Margaret answered, "does not lie in that direction."

"And to do her justice, I don't think Miss Eschelle's does, either. She
appears to be more interested now in New York than in London."

He laughed as he said this, and Margaret laughed also, and then stopped
suddenly, thinking of the roses that came that morning. Could she be
comparing the Londoner with the handsome American who sat by her side at
the opera last night? She was half annoyed with herself at the thought.

"And are not you also interested in New York, Mr. Lyon?" my wife asked.

"Yes, moderately so, if you will permit me to say it." It was an
effort on his part to keep up the conversation, Margaret was so wholly
unresponsive; and afterwards, knowing how affairs stood with them, I
could understand his well-bred misery. The hardest thing in the world
is to suffer decorously and make no sign in the midst of a society which
insists on stoicism, no matter how badly one is hurt. The Society for
First Aid to the Injured hardens its heart in these cases. "I have
never seen another place," he continued, "where the women are so busy
in improving themselves. Societies, clubs, parlor lectures, readings,
recitations, musicales, classes-