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