addition to beauty a woman has the reputation of wealth, she is as nearly irresistible here as anywhere.  To Margaret, who was able to return the hospitality she received, and whose equipage was almost as much admired as her toilets, all doors were open—­a very natural thing, surely, in a good-natured, give-and-take world.  The colonel—­Margaret had laughed till she cried when first she heard her husband saluted by this title in Washington by his New Hampshire acquaintances, but he explained to her that he had justly won it years ago by undergoing the hardship of receptions as a member of the Governor’s staff—­the colonel had brought on his horses and carriages, not at all by way of ostentation, but simply out of regard to what was due her as his wife, and because a carriage at call is a constant necessity in this city, whose dignity is equal to the square of its distances, and because there is something incongruous in sending a bride about in a herdic.  Margaret’s unworldly simplicity had received a little shock when she first saw her servants in livery, but she was not slow to see the propriety and even necessity of it in a republican society, since elegance cannot be a patchwork, but must be harmonious, and there is no harmony between a stylish turnout—­noble horses nobly caparisoned—­and a coachman and footman on the box dressed according to their own vulgar taste.  Given a certain position, one’s sense of fitness and taste mast be maintained.  And there is so much kindliness and consideration in human nature—­Margaret’s gorgeous coachman and footman never by a look revealed their knowledge that she was new to the situation, and I dare say that their respectful demeanor contributed to raise her in her own esteem as one of the select and favored in this prosperous world.  The most self-poised and genuine are not insensible to the tribute of this personal consideration.  My lady giving orders to her respectful servitors, and driving down the avenue in her luxurious turnout, is not at all the same person in feeling that she would be if dragged about in a dissolute-looking hack whose driver has the air of the stable.  We take kindly to this transformation, and perhaps it is only the vulgar in soul who become snobbish in it.  Little by little, under this genial consideration, Margaret advanced in the pleasant path of worldliness; and we heard, by the newspapers and otherwise—­indeed, Mr. and Mrs. Morgan were there for a couple of weeks in the winter—­that she was never more sweet and gracious and lovely than in this first season at the capital.  I don’t know that the town was raving, as they said, about her beauty and wit—­there is nothing like the wit of a handsome woman—­and amiability and unostentatious little charities, but she was a great favorite.  We used to talk about it by the fire in Brandon, where everything reminded us of the girl we loved, and rejoice in her good-fortune and happiness, and get rather heavy-hearted in thinking that she had gone away from us into such splendor.