and a sympathetic witness must have followed with compassion her course
from ball to ball, from reception to reception, from parlor-reading to
parlor-reading, from musicale to musicale, from play to play, from opera
to opera. She tasted, after she had practically renounced them, the
bitter and the insipid flavors of fashionable amusement, in the hope that
Margaret might find them sweet, and now at the end she had to own to
herself that she had failed. It was coming Lent again, and the girl had
only grown thinner and more serious with the diversions that did not
divert her from the baleful works of beneficence on which Mrs. Horn felt
that she was throwing her youth away. Margaret could have borne either
alone, but together they were wearing her out. She felt it a duty to
undergo the pleasures her aunt appointed for her, but she could not
forego the other duties in which she found her only pleasure.

She kept up her music still because she could employ it at the meetings
for the entertainment, and, as she hoped, the elevation of her
working-women; but she neglected the other aesthetic interests which once
occupied her; and, at sight of Beaton talking with her, Mrs. Horn caught
at the hope that he might somehow be turned to account in reviving
Margaret's former interest in art. She asked him if Mr. Wetmore had his
classes that winter as usual; and she said she wished Margaret could be
induced to go again: Mr. Wetmore always said that she did not draw very
well, but that she had a great deal of feeling for it, and her work was
interesting. She asked, were the Leightons in town again; and she
murmured a regret that she had not been able to see anything of them,
without explaining why; she said she had a fancy that if Margaret knew
Miss Leighton, and what she was doing, it might stimulate her, perhaps.
She supposed Miss Leighton was still going on with her art? Beaton said,
Oh yes, he believed so.