I am sorry to say that Margaret was usually obliged to go alone to the little church where she said her prayers; for however restful her life might have been while that season was getting under way, Henderson was involved in the most serious struggle of his life—­a shameful kind of conspiracy, Margaret told Carmen, against him.  I have hinted at his annoyance in the courts.  Ever since September he had been pestered with injunctions, threatened with attachments.  And now December had come and Congress was in session; in the very first days an investigation had been ordered into the land grants involved in the Southwestern operations.  Uncle Jerry was in Washington to explain matters there, and Henderson, with the ablest counsel in the city, was fighting in the courts.  The affair made a tremendous stir.  Some of the bondholders of the A. and B. happened to be men of prominence, and able to make a noise about their injury.  As several millions were involved in this one branch of the case —­the suit of the bondholders—­the newspapers treated it with the consideration and dignity it deserved.  It was a vast financial operation, some said, scathingly, a “deal,” but the magnitude of it prevented it from falling into the reports of petty swindling that appear in the police-court column.  It was a public affair, and not to be judged by one’s private standard.  I know that there were remarks made about Henderson that would have pained Margaret if she had heard them, but I never heard that he lost standing in the street.  Still, in justice to the street it must be said that it charitably waits for things to be proven, and that if Henderson had failed, he might have had little more lenient judgment in the street than elsewhere.

In fact, those were very trying days for him-days when he needed all the private sympathy he could get, and to be shielded, in his great fight with the conspiracy, from petty private annoyances.  It needed all his courage and good-temper and bonhomie to carry him through.  That he went through was evidence not only of his adroitness and ability, but it was proof also that he was a good fellow.  If there were people who thought otherwise, I never heard that they turned their backs on him, or failed in that civility which he never laid aside in his intercourse with others.

If a man present a smiling front to the world under extreme trial, is not that all that can be expected of him?  Shall he not be excused for showing a little irritation at home when things go badly?  Henderson was as good-humored a man as I ever knew, and he loved Margaret, he was proud of her, he trusted her.  Since when did the truest love prevent a man from being petulant, even to the extent of wounding those he best loves, especially if the loved one shows scruples when sympathy is needed?  The reader knows that the present writer has no great confidence in the principle of Carmen; but if she had been married, and her husband had wrecked an insurance company and appropriated all the surplus belonging to the policy-holders, I don’t believe she would have nagged him about it.