When Henderson came, as he did several times for a few days, Margaret’s happiness was complete.  She basked in the sun of his easy enjoyment of life.  She liked to take him about with her, and see the welcome in all companies of a man so handsome, so natural and cordial, as her husband.  Especially aid she like the consideration in which he was evidently held at the club, where the members gathered about him to listen to his racy talk and catch points about the market.  She liked to think that he was not a woman’s man.  He gave her his version of some recent transactions that had been commented on in the newspapers, and she was indignant over the insinuations about him.  It was the price, he said, that everybody had to pay for success.  Why shouldn’t he, she reflected, make money?  Everybody would if they could, and no one knew how generous he was.  If she had been told that the family of Jerry Hollowell thought of him in the same way, she would have said that there was a world-wide difference in the two men.  Insensibly she was losing the old standards she used to apply to success.  Here in Lenox, in this prosperous, agreeable world, there was nothing to remind her of them.

In her enjoyment of this existence without care, I do not suppose it occurred to her to examine if her ideals had been lowered.  Sometimes Henderson had a cynical, mocking tone about the world, which she reproved with a caress, but he was always tolerant and good-natured.  If he had told her that he acted upon the maxim that every man and woman has his and her price she would have been shocked, but she was getting to make allowances that she would not have made before she learned to look at the world through his eyes.  She could see that the Brandon circle was over-scrupulous.  Her feeling of this would have been confirmed if she had known that when her aunt read the letter announcing a month’s visit to the Eschelles in Newport, she laid it down with a sigh.

XVI

Uncle Jerry was sitting on the piazza of the Ocean House, absorbed in the stock reports of a New York journal, answering at random the occasional observations of his wife, who filled up one of the spacious chairs near him—­a florid woman, with diamonds in her ears, who had the resolute air of enjoying herself.  It was an August Newport morning, when there is a salty freshness in the air, but a temperature that discourages exertion.  A pony phaeton dashed by containing two ladies.  The ponies were cream-colored, with flowing manes and tails, and harness of black and gold; the phaeton had yellow wheels with a black body; the diminutive page with folded arms, on the seat behind, wore a black jacket and yellow breeches.  The lady who held the yellow silk reins was a blonde with dark eyes.  As they flashed by, the lady on the seat with her bowed, and Mr. Hollowell returned the salute.

“Who’s that?” asked Mrs. Hollowell.