Mr. Lyon had made himself very agreeable to the little circle, not less by his inquiring spirit than by his unaffected manners, by a kind of simplicity which women recognize as unconscious, the result of an inherited habit of not thinking about one’s position.  In excess it may be very disagreeable, but when it is combined with genuine good-nature and no self-assertion, it is attractive.  And although American women like a man who is aggressive towards the world and combative, there is the delight of novelty in one who has leisure to be agreeable, leisure for them, and who seems to their imagination to have a larger range in life than those who are driven by business—­one able to offer the peace and security of something attained.

There had been several little neighborhood entertainments, dinners at the Morgans’ and at Mrs. Fletcher’s, and an evening cup of tea at Miss Forsythe’s.  In fact Margaret and Mr. Lyon had been thrown much together.  He had accompanied her to vespers, and they had taken a wintry walk or two together before the snow came.  My wife had not managed it—­she assured me of that; but she had not felt authorized to interfere; and she had visited the public library and looked into the British Peerage.  Men were so suspicious.  Margaret was quite able to take care of herself.  I admitted that, but I suggested that the Englishman was a stranger in a strange land, that he was far from home, and had perhaps a weakened sense of those powerful social influences which must, after all, control him in the end.  The only response to this was, “I think, dear, you’d better wrap him up in cotton and send him back to his family.”

Among her other activities Margaret was interested in a mission school in the city, to which she devoted an occasional evening and Sunday afternoons.  This was a new surprise for Mr. Lyon.  Was this also a part of the restlessness of American life?  At Mrs. Howe’s german the other evening the girl had seemed wholly absorbed in dress, and the gayety of the serious formality of the occasion, feeling the responsibility of it scarcely less than the “leader.”  Yet her mind was evidently much occupied with the “condition of women,” and she taught in a public school.  He could not at all make it out.  Was she any more serious about the german than about the mission school?  It seemed odd at her age to take life so seriously.  And was she serious in all her various occupations, or only experimenting?  There was a certain mocking humor in the girl that puzzled the Englishman still more.

“I have not seen much of your life,” he said one night to Mr. Morgan; “but aren’t most American women a little restless, seeking an occupation?”

“Perhaps they have that appearance; but about the same number find it, as formerly, in marriage.”

“But I mean, you know, do they look to marriage as an end so much?”

“I don’t know that they ever did look to marriage as anything but a means.”