XXII
It is difficult not to convey a false impression of Margaret at this time. Habits, manners, outward conduct—nay, the superficial kindliness in human intercourse, the exterior graceful qualities, may all remain when the character has subtly changed, when the real aims have changed, when the ideals are lowered. The fair exterior may be only a shell. I can imagine the heart retaining much tenderness and sympathy with suffering when the soul itself has ceased to struggle for the higher life, when the mind has lost, in regard to life, the final discrimination of what is right and wrong.
Perhaps it is fairer to Margaret to consider the general opinion of the world regarding her. No doubt, if we had now known her for the first time, we should have admired her exceedingly, and probably have accounted her thrice happy in filling so well her brilliant position. That her loss of interest in things intellectual, in a wide range of topics of human welfare, which is in the individual soul a sign of warmth and growth, made her less companionable to some is true, but her very absorption in the life of her world made her much more attractive to others. I well remember a dinner one day at the Hendersons', when Mr. Morgan and I happened to be in town, and the gay chat and persiflage of the society people there assembled. Margaret shone in it. The light and daring touch of her raillery Carmen herself might have envied, and the spirit in which she handled the trifles and personal gossip tossed to the surface, like the bubbles on the champagne.
It was such a pretty picture—the noble diningroom, the table sparkling with glass and silver and glowing with masses of choicest flowers from the conservatory, the animated convives, and Margaret presiding, radiant in a costume of white and gold.
“After all,” Morgan was saying, apropos of the position of women, “men get mighty little out of it in the modern arrangement.”
“I've always said, Mr. Morgan,” Margaret retorted, “that you came into the world a couple of centuries too late; you ought to have been here in the squaw age.”
“Well, men were of some account then. I appeal to Henderson,” Morgan persisted, “if he gets more than his board and clothes.”
“Oh, my husband has to make his way; he's no time for idling and philosophizing round.”
“I should think not. Come, Henderson, speak up; what do you get out of it?”