“That’s just it; you don’t care,” sinking into her seat, still unappeased.  “I think I’ll tell Mr. Lyon that he will have occupation enough to keep him in this country if he puts his money into that scheme you were talking over the other night.”

Henderson was in turn annoyed.  “You can tell him anything you like.  I’m no more responsible for his speculations than for his domestic concerns.”

“Now you are offended.  It’s not nice of you to put me in the wrong when you know how impulsive I am.  I wish I didn’t let my feelings run away with me.”  This said reflectively, and looking away from him.  And then, turning towards him with wistful, pleading eyes:  “Do you know, I sometimes wish I had never seen you.  You have so much power to make a person very bad or very good.”

“Come, come,” said Henderson, rising, “we mustn’t quarrel about an Englishman—­such old friends.”

“Yes, we are very old friends.”  The girl rose also, and gave him her hand.  “Perhaps that’s the worst of it.  If I should lose your esteem I should go into a convent.”  She dropped his hand, and snatching a bunch of violets from the table, fixed them in his button-hole, looking up in his face with vestal sweetness.  “You are not offended?”

“Not a bit; not the least in the world,” said Henderson, heartily, patting the hand that still lingered upon his lapel.

When he had gone, Carmen sank into her chair with a gesture of vexation, and there were hard lines in her sweet face.  “What an insensible stick!” Then she ran up-stairs to her mother, who sat in her room reading one of the town-weeklies, into which some elderly ladies look for something to condemn.

“Well?”

“Such a stupid evening!  He is just absorbed in that girl from Brandon.  I told him we were going abroad.”

“Going abroad!  You are crazy, child.  New York is forty times as amusing.”

“And forty times as tiresome.  I’m sick of it.  Mamma, don’t you think it would be only civil to ask Mr. Lyon to a quiet dinner before he goes?”

“Certainly.  That is what I said the other day.  I thought you—­”

“Yes, I was ill-natured then.  But I want to please you.  And we really ought to be civil.”

One day is so like another in the city.  Every day something new, and, the new the same thing over again.  And always the expectation that it will be different tomorrow.  Nothing is so tiresome as a kaleidoscope, though it never repeats itself.

Fortunately there are two pursuits that never pall—­making money and making love.

Henderson had a new object in life, though the new one did not sensibly divert him from the old; it rather threw a charming light over it, and made the possibilities of it more attractive.  In all his schemes he found the thought of Margaret entering.  Why should it not have been Carmen? he sometimes thought.  She thoroughly understood him.  She would never stand in the way of his most daring ambitions with any scruples.  Her conscience would never nag his.  She would be ambitious for a career for him.  Would she care for him or the career?  How clever she was!  And affectionate?  She would be if she had a heart.