In the spring the Hendersons went abroad.  The resolution to go may have been sudden, for Margaret wrote of it briefly, and had not time to run up and say good-by.  The newspapers said that the trip was taken on account of Mrs. Henderson’s health; that it was because Henderson needed rest from overwork; that he found it convenient to be away for a time, pending the settlement of certain complications.  There were ugly stories afloat, but they were put in so many forms, and followed by so many different sorts of denial, and so much importance was attached to every word Henderson uttered, and every step he took, that the general impression of his far-reaching sagacity and Napoleonic command of fortune was immensely raised.  Nothing is more significant of our progress than the good-humored deference of the world to this sort of success.  It is said that the attraction of gravitation lessens according to the distance from the earth, and there seems to be a region of aerial freedom, if one can attain it, where the moral forces cease to be operative.

They remained in Europe a year, although Mr. Henderson in the interim made two or three hasty trips to this country, always, so far as it was made public, upon errands of great importance, and in connection with names of well-known foreign capitalists and enterprises of dignity.  Margaret wrote seldom, but always with evident enjoyment of her experiences, which were mainly social, for wherever they went they commanded the consideration that is accorded to fortune.  What most impressed me in these hasty notes was that the woman was so little interested in the persons and places which in the old days she expressed such a lively desire to see.  If she saw them at all, it was from a different point of view than that she formerly had.  She did indeed express her admiration of some charming literary friends of ours in London, to whom I had written to call on her—­people in very moderate circumstances, I am ashamed to say—­but she had not time to see much of them.  She and her husband had spent a couple of days at Chisholm —­delightful days.  Of the earl she had literally nothing to say, except that he was very kind, and that his family received them with the most engaging and simple cordiality.  “It makes me laugh,” she wrote from Chisholm, “when I think what we considered fine at Lenox and Newport.  I’ve got some ideas for our new house.”  A note came from “John Lyon” to Miss Forsythe, expressing the great pleasure it was to return, even in so poor a way, the hospitality he had received at Brandon.  I did not see it, but Miss Forsythe said it was a sad little note.

In Paris Margaret was ill—­very ill; and this misfortune caused for a time a revival of all the old affection, in sympathy with a disappointment which awoke in our womankind all the tenderness of their natures.  She was indeed a little delicate for some time, but all our apprehensions were relieved by the reports from Rome of a succession of gayeties little interfered with by archaeological studies.  They returned in June.  Of the year abroad there was nothing to chronicle, and there would be nothing to note except that when Margaret passed a day with us on her return, we felt, as never before, that our interests in life were more and more divergent.