that young married set which Margaret preferred, to the anger and
disgust of her grandmother and against the entreaties of her own
common sense. "The last place in the world to look for a husband,"
Madam Bowker had said again and again, to both her daughter and
her granddaughter. "Their talk is all in ridicule of marriage, and
of every sacred thing. And if there are any bachelors, they have
come--well, certainly not in search of honorable wedlock."

The room was noisily gay; but Margaret, at the tea-table in a
rather somber brown dress with a big brown hat, whose great plumes
shadowed her pale, somewhat haggard face, was evidently not in one
of her sparkling moods. The headache powder and the nap had not
been successful. She greeted Arkwright with a slight, absent
smile, seemed hardly to note Craig, as Arkwright presented him.

"Sit down here beside Miss Severence," Grant said.

"Yes, do," acquiesced Margaret; and Joshua thought her cold and
haughty, an aristocrat of the unapproachable type, never natural
and never permitting others to be natural.

"And tell her all about yourself," continued Grant.

"My friend Josh, here," he explained to Margaret, "is one of those
serious, absorbed men who concentrate entirely upon themselves. It
isn't egotism; it's genius."

Craig was ruffled and showed it. He did not like persiflage; it
seemed an assault upon dignity, and in those early days in
Washington he was full of dignity and of determination to create a