When she came down, at twenty minutes after seven, her father stood in
the hall, at the foot of the stairs, waiting to be her escort through
the dark. He looked up and watched her as she descended, and his gaze
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.
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