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?”

“Oh,” said Henderson, glancing at his wife with an amused expression, “I’m doing very well.  I’m very well taken care of, but I often wonder what the fellows did when polygamy was the fashion.”

“Polygamy, indeed!” cried Margaret.  “So men only dropped the a pluribus unum method on account of the expense?”

“Not at all,” replied Henderson.  “Women are so much better now than formerly that one wife is quite enough.”

“You have got him well in hand, Mrs. Henderson, but—­” Morgan began.

“But,” continued Margaret for him, “you think as things are going that polyandry will have to come in fashion—­a woman will need more than one husband to support her?”

“And I was born too soon,” murmured Carmen.

“Yes, dear, you’ll have to be born again.  But, Mr. Morgan, you don’t seem to understand what civilization is.”

“I’m beginning to.  I’ve been thinking—­this is entirely impersonal—­that it costs more to keep one fine lady going than it does a college.  Just reckon it up.” (Margaret was watching him with sparkling eyes.) “The palace in town is for her, the house in the mountains, the house by the sea, are for her, the army of servants is for her, the horses and carriages for all weathers are for her, the opera box is for her, and then the wardrobe—­why, half Paris lives on what women wear.  I say nothing of what would become of the medical profession but for her.”