Unconsciously to herself, Margaret had worked this miracle.  Never before did the little town look so bright; never before was there exactly such a color on the hills-sentiment is so pale compared with love; never before did her home appear so sweet; never before was there such a fine ecstasy in the coming of spring.

For all this, home-coming, after the first excitement of arrival is over, is apt to be dull.  The mind is so occupied with other emotions that the friends even seem a little commonplace and unresponsive, and the routine is tame.  Out of such a whirl of new experiences to return and find that nothing has happened; that the old duties and responsibilities are waiting!  Margaret had eagerly leaped from the carriage to throw herself into her aunt’s arms-what a sweet welcome it is, that of kin!—­and yet almost before the greeting was over she felt alone.  There was that in the affectionate calmness of Miss Forsythe that seemed to chill the glow and fever of passion in her new world.  And she had nothing to tell.  Everything had changed, and she must behave as if nothing had happened.  She must take up her old life—­the interests of the neighborhood.  Even the little circle of people she loved appeared distant from her at the moment; impossible it seemed to bring them into the rushing current of her life.  Their joy in getting her back again she could not doubt, nor the personal affection with which she was welcomed.  But was the New England atmosphere a little cold?  What was the flavor she missed in it all?  The next day a letter came.  The excuse for it was the return of a fan which Mr. Henderson had carried off in his pocket from the opera.  What a wonderful letter it was—­his handwriting, the first note from him!  Miss Forsythe saw in it only politeness.  For Margaret it outweighed the town of Brandon.  It lay in her lap as she sat at her chamber window looking out over the landscape, which was beginning to be flushed with a pale green.  There was a robin on the lawn, and a blackbird singing in the pine.  “Go not, happy day,” she said, with tears in her eyes.  She took up the brief letter and read it again.  Was he really hers, “truly”?  And she answered the letter, swiftly and with no hesitation, but with a throbbing heart.  It was a civil acknowledgment; that was all.  Henderson might have lead it aloud in the Exchange.  But what color, what charming turns of expression, what of herself, had the girl put into it, that gave him such a thrill of pleasure when he read it?  What secret power has a woman to make a common phrase so glow with her very self?