She said that no true woman could stand such pampering of her senses without destruction of her moral fibre.  But Henderson had his way, as he always had it.  What pleased her most in the house was the conservatory, opening out from the drawing-room—­a spacious place with a fountain and cool vines and flowering plants, not a tropical hothouse in a stifling atmosphere, in which nothing could live except orchids and flowers born near the equator, but a garden with a temperature adapted to human lungs, where one could sit and enjoy the sunshine, and the odor of flowers, and the clear and not too incessant notes of Mexican birds.  But when it was all done, undoubtedly the most agreeable room in the house was that to which least thought had been given, the room to which any odds and ends could be sent, the room to which everybody gravitated when rest and simple enjoyment without restraint were the object Henderson’s own library, with its big open fire, and the books and belongings of his bachelor days.  Man is usually not credited with much taste or ability to take care of himself in the matter of comfortable living, but it is frequently noticed that when woman has made a dainty paradise of every other portion of the house, the room she most enjoys, that from which it is difficult to keep out the family, is the one that the man is permitted to call his own, in which he retains some of the comforts and can indulge some of the habits of his bachelor days.  There is an important truth in this fact with regard to the sexes, but I do not know what it is.

They were married in October, and went at once to their own house.  I suppose all other days were but a preparation for this golden autumn day on which we went to church and returned to the wedding-breakfast.  I am sure everybody was happy.  Miss Forsythe was so happy that tears were in her eyes half the time, and she bustled about with an affectation of cheerfulness that was almost contagious.  Poor, dear, gentle lady!  I can imagine the sensations of a peach-tree, in an orchard of trees which bud and bloom and by-and-by are weighty with yellow fruit, year after year—­a peach-tree that blooms, also, but never comes to fruition, only wastes its delicate sweetness on the air, and finally blooms less and less, but feels nevertheless in each returning spring the stir of the sap and the longing for that fuller life, while all the orchard bursts into flower, and the bees swarm about the pink promises, and the fruit sets and slowly matures to lusciousness in the sun of July.  I fancy the wedding, which robbed us all, was hardest for her, for it was in one sense a finality of her life.  Whereas if Margaret had regrets—­and deep sorrow she had in wrenching herself from the little neighborhood, though she never could have guessed the vacancy she caused by the withdrawal of her loved presence—­her own life was only just beginning, and she was sustained by the longing which every human soul has for a new career,