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you better than anyone besides, but I am not the kind that can talk--" "Well, perhaps I couldn't talk about it, myself, but I think I could. I can't imagine not talking about anything. But of course you are the same old 'Lena. Will you let me read his letters?" "Oh, no! no!" "I'll show you every letter I get. I never could be so stingy." "I could not do that. I should feel as if I had lost something." "You were always so romantic. There never was any romance about me. Poor Mr. Trennahan will have something to do to live up to you. An altitude of eleven thousand feet is trying to most masculine constitutions. But I suppose he likes the variety of it, after twenty years of society girls. Well, let him rest." A door shut heavily in the hall below. Helena sprang to her feet. "There's papa. I must go down. I never leave him a minute alone if I can help it. That's my only crumpled rose-leaf,--he is so pale and seems so depressed at times. You know how jolly and dashing he used to be. He hasn't a thing to worry him, and I can't think what is the matter. I beg him to tell me, but he says a man at his age can't expect to be well all the time. I can always amuse him, and I like to be with him all I can. He's such a darling! He'd build me a house of gold if I asked for it." II When Magdalena returned home she spread her new garments on the bed and regarded them with much satisfaction. Helena had expended no less thought on these than on her own, and none whatever on the meagreness of Don Roberto's check. There was a brown tweed with a dash of scarlet, a calling-frock of fawn-coloured camel's hair and silk, a dinner-gown of pale blue with bunches of scarlet poppies, and a miraculous coming-out gown of ivory gauze, the deepest shade that could be called white. And besides two charming hats there was a large box of presents: fans, silk stockings, gloves, handkerchiefs, and soft indescribable things for the house toilette. And her trousseau was also to come from Paris! Don Roberto, in his delight at having secured Trennahan, had informed his daughter that she should have a trousseau fit for a princess; or, on second thoughts, for a Yorba. Magdalena opened a drawer and took out another of Helena's presents,--a jewelled dagger. While Colonel Belmont and his daughter were in Madrid there was a sale of a spendthrift noble's treasures. They had gone to see the famous collection, and among other things the dagge
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