"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.
And upon that, for the moment, she became as serious as he.

She lifted her hand from his shoulder and then set it back more firmly, so that he should feel the reassurance of its pressure.
"Don't worry," she said, in a low voice and gravely.