“I can imagine a great deal worse husbands than the Earl of Chisholm.”

“Well, I haven’t any imagination.”

There was no reading that day nor the next.  In the morning there was a drive with the ponies through town, in the afternoon in the carriage by the sea, with a couple of receptions, the five o’clock tea, with its chatter, and in the evening a dinner party for Margaret.  One day sufficed to launch her, and there-after Carmen had only admiration for the unflagging spirit which Margaret displayed.  “If you were only unmarried,” she said, “what larks we could have!” Margaret looked grave at this, but only for a moment, for she well knew that she could not please her husband better than by enjoying the season to the full.  He never criticised her for taking the world as it is; and she confessed to herself that life went very pleasantly in a house where there were never any questions raised about duties.  The really serious thought in Carmen’s mind was that perhaps after all a woman had no real freedom until she was married.  And she began to be interested in Margaret’s enjoyment of the world.

It was not, after all, a new world, only newly arranged, like another scene in the same play.  The actors, who came and went, were for the most part the acquaintances of the Washington winter, and the callers and diners and opera-goers and charity managers of the city.  In these days Margaret was quite at home with the old set:  the British Minister, the Belgian, the French, the Spanish, the Mexican, the German, and the Italian, with their families and attaches—­nothing was wanting, not even the Chinese mandarin, who had rooms at the hotel, going about everywhere in the conscientious discharge of his duties as ambassador to American society, a great favorite on account of his silk apparel, which gave him the appearance of a clumsy woman, and the everlasting, three-thousand-year-old smile on his broad face, punctiliously leaving in every house a big flaring red piece of paper which the ladies pinned up for a decoration; a picture of helpless, childlike enjoyment, and almost independent of the interpreter who followed him about, when he had learned, upon being introduced to a lady, or taking a cup of tea, to say “good-by” as distinctly as an articulating machine; a truly learned man, setting an example of civility and perfect self-possession, but keenly observant of the oddities of the social life to which his missionary government had accredited him.  One would like to have heard the comments of the minister and his suite upon our manners; but perhaps they were too polite to make any even in their seclusion.  Certain it is that no one ever heard any of the legation express any opinion but the most suave and flattering.