No, she could not love him.  The man to command her heart must be of another type.  But the greatest experience in a woman’s life had come to her here, just now, in this commonplace room.  A man had said he loved her.  A thousand times as a girl she had dreamed of that, hardly confessing it to herself, and thought of such a scene, and feared it.  And a man had said that he loved her.  Her eyes grew tenderer and her face burned at the thought.  Was it with pleasure?  Yes, and with womanly pain.  What an awful thing it was!  Why couldn’t he have seen?  A man had said he loved her.  Perhaps it was not in her to love any one.  Perhaps she should live on and on like her aunt Forsythe.  Well, it was over; and Margaret roused herself as her aunt entered the room.

“Has Mr. Lyon been here?”

“Yes; he has just gone.  He was so sorry not to see you and say good-by.  He left ever so many messages for you.”

“And” (Margaret was moving as if to go) “did he say nothing—­nothing to you?”

“Oh yes, he said a great deal,” answered this accomplished hypocrite, looking frankly in her aunt’s eyes.  “He said how delightful his visit had been, and how sorry he was to go.”

“And nothing else, Margaret?”

“Oh yes; he said he was going to Washington.”  And the girl was gone from the room.

VI

Margaret hastened to her chamber.  Was the air oppressive?  She opened the window and sat down by it.  A soft south wind was blowing, eating away the remaining patches of snow; the sky was full of fleecy clouds.  Where do these days come from in January?  Why should nature be in a melting mood?  Margaret instinctively would have preferred a wild storm, violence, anything but this elemental languor.  Her emotion was incredible to herself.

It was only an incident.  It had all happened in a moment, and it was over.  But it was the first of the kind in a woman’s life.  The thrilling, mysterious word had been dropped into a woman’s heart.  Hereafter she would be changed.  She never again would be as she was before.  Would her heart be hardened or softened by the experience?  She did not love him; that was clear.  She had done right; that was clear.  But he had said he loved her.  Unwittingly she was following him in her thought.  She had rejected plain John Lyon, amiable, intelligent, unselfish, kindly, deferential.  She had rejected also the Earl of Chisholm, a conspicuous position, an honorable family, luxury, a great opportunity in life.  It came to the girl in a flash.  She moved nervously in her chair.  She put down the thought as unworthy of her.  But she had entertained it for a moment.  In that second, ambition had entered the girl’s soul.  She had a glimpse of her own nature that seemed new to her.  Was this, then, the meaning of her restlessness, of her charitable activities, of her unconfessed dreams of some career?  Ambition had entered her soul in