To her aunt’s letter conveying the intelligence of Mr. Lyon’s loss, Margaret replied with a civil message of condolence.  The news had already reached the Eschelles, and Carmen, Margaret said, had written to the new earl a most pious note, which contained no allusion to his change of fortune, except an expression of sympathy with his now enlarged opportunity for carrying on his philanthropic plans—­a most unworldly note.  “I used to think,” she had said, when confiding what she had done to Margaret, “that you would make a perfect missionary countess, but you have done better, my dear, and taken up a much more difficult work among us fashionable sinners.  Do you know,” she went on, “that I feel a great deal less worldly than I used to?”

Margaret wrote a most amusing account of this interview, and added that Carmen was really very good-hearted, and not half as worldly-minded as she pretended to be; an opinion with which Miss Forsythe did not at all agree.  She had spent a fortnight with Margaret after Easter, and she came back in a dubious frame of mind.  Margaret’s growing intimacy with Carmen was one of the sources of her uneasiness.  They appeared to be more and more companionable, although Margaret’s clear perception of character made her estimate of Carmen very nearly correct.  But the fact remained that she found her company interesting.  Whether the girl tried to astonish the country aunt, or whether she was so thoroughly a child of her day as to lack certain moral perceptions, I do not know, but her candid conversation greatly shocked Miss Forsythe.

“Margaret,” she said one day, in one of her apparent bursts of confidence, “seems to have had such a different start in life from mine.  Sometimes, Miss Forsythe, she puzzles me.  I never saw anybody so much in love as she is with Mr. Henderson; she doesn’t simply love him, she is in love with him.  I don’t wonder she is fond of him—­any woman might be that—­but, do you know, she actually believes in him.”

“Why shouldn’t she believe in him?” exclaimed Miss Forsythe, in astonishment.

“Oh, of course, in a way,” the girl went on.  “I like Mr. Henderson—­I like him very much—­but I don’t believe in him.  It isn’t the way now to believe in anybody very much.  We don’t do it, and I think we get along just as well—­and better.  Don’t you think it’s nicer not to have any deceptions?”

Miss Forsythe was too much stunned to make any reply.  It seemed to her that the bottom had fallen out of society.

“Do you think Mr. Henderson believes in people?” the girl persisted.

“If he does not he isn’t much of a man.  If people don’t believe in each other, society is going to pieces.  I am astonished at such a tone from a woman.”

“Oh, it isn’t any tone in me, my dear Miss Forsythe,” Carmen continued, sweetly.  “Society is a great deal pleasanter when you are not anxious and don’t expect too much.”