of
the town-weeklies, into which some elderly ladies look for something to
condemn.

"Well?"

"Such a stupid evening! He is just absorbed in that girl from Brandon. I
told him we were going abroad."

"Going abroad! You are crazy, child. New York is forty times as
amusing."

"And forty times as tiresome. I'm sick of it. Mamma, don't you think it
would be only civil to ask Mr. Lyon to a quiet dinner before he goes?"

"Certainly. That is what I said the other day. I thought you--"

"Yes, I was ill-natured then. But I want to please you. And we really
ought to be civil."

One day is so like another in the city. Every day something new, and,
the new the same thing over again. And always the expectation that it
will be different tomorrow. Nothing is so tiresome as a kaleidoscope,
though it never repeats itself.

Fortunately there are two pursuits that never pall--making money and
making love.

Henderson had a new object in life, though the new one did not sensibly
divert him from the old; it rather threw a charming light over it, and
made the possibilities of it more attractive. In all his schemes he
found the thought of Margaret entering. Why should it not have been
Carmen? he sometimes thought. She thoroughly understood him. She would
never stand in the way of his most daring ambitions with any scruples.
Her conscience would never nag his. She would be ambitious for a career
for him. Would she care for him or the career? How clever she was! And
affectionate? She would be if she had a heart.

He was not balancing the two. What man ever does, in fact? It was
simply because Margaret had a heart that he loved her, that she seemed
necessary to him. He was quite capable of making a match for his
advancement, but he felt strong enough to make one for his own pleasure.
And if there are men so worldly as not to be attracted to unworldliness
in a woman, Henderson was not one of them. If his heart had not
dictated, his brain would have told him the value of the sympathy of a
good woman.

He was a very busy man, in the thick of the struggle for a great
fortune. It did not occur to him to reflect whether she would approve
all the methods he resorted to, but all the women he knew liked success,
and the thought of her invigorated him. If she once loved him, she would
approve what he did.

He saw much of her in those passing days--days that went like a dream
to one of them at least. He was a welcome guest at the Arbusers',