was fond and proud--and profoundly disturbed. But she smiled and
nodded gaily, and, when she reached the floor, put a hand on his
shoulder.

"At least no one could suspect me to-night," she said. "I LOOK rich,
don't I, papa?"

She did. She had a look that worshipful girl friends bravely called
"regal." A head taller than her father, she was as straight and
jauntily poised as a boy athlete; and her brown hair and her brown
eyes were like her mother's, but for the rest she went back to some
stronger and livelier ancestor than either of her parents.

"Don't I look too rich to be suspected?" she insisted.

"You look everything beautiful, Mary," he said, huskily.

"And my dress?" She threw open her dark velvet cloak, showing a
splendor of white and silver. "Anything better at Nice next winter,
do you think?" She laughed, shrouding her glittering figure in the
cloak again. "Two years old, and no one would dream it! I did it
over."

"You can do anything, Mary."

There was a curious humility in his tone, and something more--a
significance not veiled and yet abysmally apologetic. It was as if
he suggested something to her and begged her forgiveness in the same
breath.