And so it was with her in everything.  She saved her finest clothes, her smiles, her very interest in life, her capacity for enjoyment, all for London.  And Philip, perceiving her indifference to the outside world, her new equability of temper, her uniform softness of demeanour, her constant meditative half-smile due to pleasurable dreams of the future, read all these as tokens of blissful content like that which glowed in his own heart.  And he was supremely happy.  ’Tis well for a man to have two months of such happiness, to balance against later years of sorrow; but sad will that happiness be in the memory, if it owe itself to the person to whom the sorrow in its train is due.

She would watch for him at the window, in the afternoon, when he came home from the warehouse; and would be waiting at the parlour door as he entered the hall.  With his arm about her, he would lead her to a sofa, and they would sit talking for a few minutes before he prepared for supper—­for ’twas only on great occasions that the Faringfields dined at five o’clock, as did certain wealthy New York families who followed the London mode.

“I am so perfectly, entirely, completely, utterly happy!” was the burden of Phil’s low-spoken words.

“Fie!” said Margaret, playfully, one evening.  “You must not be perfectly happy.  There must be some cloud in the sky; some annoyance in business, or such trifle.  Perfect happiness is dangerous, mamma says.  It can’t last.  It forbodes calamity to come.  ’Tis an old belief, and she vows ’tis true.”

“Why, my poor mother held that belief, too.  I fear she had little perfect happiness to test it by; but she had calamities enough.  And Bert Russell’s mother was saying the same thing the other day.  ’Tis a delusion common to mothers, I think.  I sha’n’t let it affect my felicity.  I should be ungrateful to call my contentment less than perfect.  And if calamity comes, ’twill not be owing to my happiness.”

“As for that, I can’t imagine any calamity possible to us—­unless something should occur to hinder us from going to London.  But nothing in the world shall do that, of course.”

’Twas upon this conversation that Tom and I broke in, having met as I returned from the custom-house, he from the college.

“Oho!” cried Tom, with teasing mirth, “still love-making!  I tell you what it is, brother Phil, ’tis time you two had eyes for something else besides each other.  The town is talking of how engrossed Margaret is in you, that she ignores the existence of everybody else.”

“Let ’em talk,” said Margaret, lightly, with an indifference free from malice.  “Who cares about their existence?  They’re not so interesting, with their dull teas and stupid gossip of one another!  A set of tedious rustics.”

“Hear the countess talk!” Tom rattled on, at the same time looking affectionate admiration out of his mirthful eyes.  “What a high and mighty lady is yours, my lord Philip!  I should like to know what the Morrises, and Lind Murray, and the Philipse boys and girls, and our De Lancey cousins, and the rest, would think to hear themselves called a set of rustics.”