“How delightful it is! how altogether charming!” and Margaret felt that she was included with the room in this admiration. “I told mamma that I was coming to see you this morning, even if I missed the Nestors' luncheon. I like to please myself sometimes. Mamma says I'm frivolous, but do you know”--the girls were comfortably seated by the fire, and Carmen turned her sweet face and candid eyes to her companion--“I get dreadfully tired of all this going round and round. No, I don't even go to the Indigent Mothers' Home; it's part of the same thing, but I haven't any gift that way. Ah, you were reading--that novel.” “Yes; I was trying to read it; I intend to read it.” “Oh, we have had it! It's a little past now, but it has been all the rage. Everybody has read it; that is, I don't know that anybody has read it, but everybody has been talking about it. Of course somebody must have read it, to set the thing agoing. And it has been discussed to death. I sometimes feel as if I had changed my religion half a dozen times in a fortnight. But I haven't heard anything about it for a week. We have taken up the Hindoo widows now, you know.” And the girl laughed, as if she knew she were talking nonsense. “And you do not read much in the city?” Margaret asked, with an answering smile. “Yes; in the summer. That is, some do. There is a reading set. I don't know that they read much, but there is a reading set. You know, Miss Debree, that when a book is published--really published, as Mr. Henderson says--you don't need to read it. Somehow it gets into the air and becomes common property. Everybody hears the whole thing. You can talk about it from a notice. Of course there are some novels that one must read in order to understand human nature. Do you read French?” “Yes; but not many French novels; I cannot.” “Nor can I,” said Carmen, with a sincere face. “They are too realistic for me.” She was at the moment running over in her mind a “situation” in a paper-covered novel turned down on her nightstand. “Mr. Henderson says that everybody condemns the French novels, and that people praise the novels they don't read.” “You know Mr. Henderson very well?” “Yes; we've known him a long time. He is the only man I'm afraid of.” “Afraid of?” “Well, you know he is a sort of Club man; that style of man provokes your curiosity, for you never can tell how much such men know. It makes you a little uneasy.” Carmen was looking into the fire, as if abstractedly reflecting upon the nature of men in general, but she did not fail to notice a slight expression of pain on Margaret's face. “But there is your Mr. Lyon--” Margaret laughed. “You do me too much honor. I think you discovered him first.” “Well, our Mr. Lyon.” Carmen was still looking into the fire. “He is such a good young man!” Margaret did not exactly fancy this sort of commendation, and she replied, with somewhat the tone of defending him, “We all have the highest regard for Mr. Lyon.”