If we could only note the first coming into the mind of a thought that changes life and re-forms character—­supposing that every act and every new departure has this subtle beginning—­we might be less the sport of circumstances than we seem to be.  Unnoted, the desire so swiftly follows the thought and juggles with the will.

The next day Mr. Henderson left his card and a basket of roses.  Mr. Lyon called.  It was a constrained visit.  Margaret was cordially civil, and I fancied that Mr. Lyon would have been more content if she had been less so.  If he were a lover, there was little to please him in the exchange of the commonplaces of the day.

“Yes,” he was saying to my wife, “perhaps I shall have to change my mind about the simplicity of your American life.  It is much the same in New York and London.  It is only a question of more or less sophistication.”

“Mr. Henderson tells us,” said my wife, “that you knew the Eschelles in London.”

“Yes.  Miss Eschelle almost had a career there last season.”

“Why almost?”

“Well—­you will pardon me—­one needs for success in these days to be not only very clever, but equally daring.  It is every day more difficult to make a sensation.”

“I thought her, across the house,” Margaret said, “very pretty and attractive.  I did not know you were so satirical, Mr. Lyon.  Do you mean that one must be more daring, as you call it, in London than in New York?”

“I hope it will not hurt your national pride, Miss Debree, if I say that there is always the greater competition in the larger market.”

“Oh, my pride,” Margaret answered, “does not lie in that direction.”

“And to do her justice, I don’t think Miss Eschelle’s does, either.  She appears to be more interested now in New York than in London.”

He laughed as he said this, and Margaret laughed also, and then stopped suddenly, thinking of the roses that came that morning.  Could she be comparing the Londoner with the handsome American who sat by her side at the opera last night?  She was half annoyed with herself at the thought.

“And are not you also interested in New York, Mr. Lyon?” my wife asked.

“Yes, moderately so, if you will permit me to say it.”  It was an effort on his part to keep up the conversation, Margaret was so wholly unresponsive; and afterwards, knowing how affairs stood with them, I could understand his well-bred misery.  The hardest thing in the world is to suffer decorously and make no sign in the midst of a society which insists on stoicism, no matter how badly one is hurt.  The Society for First Aid to the Injured hardens its heart in these cases.  “I have never seen another place,” he continued, “where the women are so busy in improving themselves.  Societies, clubs, parlor lectures, readings, recitations, musicales, classes—­it fatigues one to keep in sight of them.  Every afternoon, every evening, something.  I doubt if men are capable of such incessant energy, Mrs. Fairchild.”