"I cannot." His face cleared under the kiss, and he held her at arm's
length while paternal pride softened his look. "Do you really mean that
you won't shock the young men away from you?" It was as near a jest as
he had ever come, and a ripple of amusement passed over the room.

"I may shock them, but not away." The girl was really a wonder. How in
the world, he asked himself, did she happen to be his daughter?

"Do you mean that all the other girls dress like this?" It was his final
appeal to an arbitrary but acknowledged authority.

"All the popular ones. You can't wish me to dress like the unpopular
ones, can you?"

His appeal had failed, and he accepted defeat with the sober courage his
father had displayed in a greater surrender.

"Well, I suppose if everybody does it, it is all right," he conceded;
and though he was not aware of it, he had compressed into this
convenient axiom his whole philosophy of conduct.

As he crossed the room to the glowing fire and the black marble
mantelpiece, which had supplanted the delicate Adam one of a less
resplendent period, he wore an air that was at once gentle and
haughty--the expression of a man who hopes that he is a Christian and
knows that his blood is blue.

"Hasn't Stephen come in yet?" he inquired of his wife. "I thought I
heard him upstairs."