That afternoon he had looked upon her with fatherly condescension, as the pretty daughter of the two he had loved most.

From the altitude of his fifty-two he had gazed down upon her twenty-four, weighing her as like all young women of twenty-four--pleasure-loving and beau-hunting and fashion-scorched; and in a flash she had revealed the formed mind of a woman of thirty.
Altitude.

He had forgotten that relative to altitudes there are always two angles of vision--that from the summit and that from the green valley below.

Kitty saw him beyond the tree line, but just this side of the snows--and matched his condescension with pity! He chuckled.
Doddering old ass, what did it matter how she looked at him?
Beautiful and young and full of common sense, yet dangerously romantical.

To wait for the man she wanted, what did that signify but romance?
And there was her Irish blood to consider.