Only daughters are highly prized by doting fathers.
A broken ankle at fifty does not heal in a day, and until Christmas Eve Colonel Fortescue was a prisoner in his chair, doing his administrative work; and when that was done being cheered and soothed by the tenderness in which he had been lapped since the day when, as a young lieutenant, he married Betty Beverley in an old Virginia church.

Never was anything seen like Anita's devotion to her father.

It seemed as if she were never out of sound and reach of him and gave up all the merry-making of the Christmas time to be with him.

This prevented Broussard from seeing Anita very often, and never alone, but they had entered the Happy Valley together, and basked in the delicate joy of love unspoken, but not unfelt.

Anita knew that Broussard was only biding his time, and Broussard knew that Anita was waiting, in smiling silence.