iscrimination 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 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 hospitalit