The medical faculty are of the opinion that a sprain is often worse than a broken limb; a purely scientific, view of the matter, in which the patient usually does not coincide.  Well-bred people shrink from the vulgarity of violence, and avoid the publicity of any open rupture in domestic and social relations.  And yet, perhaps, a lively quarrel would be less lamentable than the withering away of friendship while appearances are kept up.  Nothing, indeed, is more pitiable than the gradual drifting apart of people who have been dear to each other—­a severance produced by change of views and of principle, and the substitution of indifference for sympathy.  This disintegration is certain to take the spring and taste out of life, and commonly to habituate one to a lower view of human nature.

There was no rupture between the Hendersons and the Brandon circle, but there was little intercourse of the kind that had existed before.  There was with us a profound sense of loss and sorrow, due partly to the growing knowledge, not pleasing to our vanity, that Margaret could get on very well without us, that we were not necessary to her life.  Miss Forsythe recovered promptly her cheerful serenity, but not the elasticity of hope; she was irretrievably hurt; it was as if life was now to be endured.  That Margaret herself was apparently unconscious of this, and that it did not affect much her own enjoyment, made it the harder to bear.  The absolute truth probably was that she regretted it, and had moments of sentimental unhappiness; but there is great compensation for such loss in the feeling of freedom to pursue a career that is more and more agreeable.  And I had to confess, when occasionally I saw Margaret during that winter, that she did not need us.  Why should she?  Did not the city offer her everything that she desired?  And where in the world are beauty, and gayety with a touch of daring, and a magnificent establishment better appreciated?  I do not know what criterion newspaper notoriety is of social prestige, but Mrs. Rodney Henderson’s movements were as faithfully chronicled as if she had been a visiting princess or an actress of eccentric proclivities.  Her name appeared as patroness of all the charities, the balls, the soirees, musical and literary, and if it did not appear in a list of the persons at any entertainment, one might suspect that the affair lacked the cachet of the best society.  I suppose the final test of one’s importance is to have all the details of one’s wardrobe spread before the public.  Judged by this, Margaret’s career in New York was phenomenal.  Even our interested household could not follow her in all the changing splendor of her raiment.  In time even Miss Forsythe ceased to read all these details, but she cut them out, deposited them with other relics in a sort of mortuary box of the child and the maiden.  I used to wonder if, in the Brandon attitude of mind at this period, there were not just a little envy of such unclouded prosperity.  It is so much easier to forgive a failure than a success.