"Yes, Dad. The table is laid in the breakfast-room. Leon will serve it when you ring. I'll—I'll go to my room and leave my wrap."
His green eyes dilated with pride as he regarded her.
"You look like a princess to-night, my girl."
"I feel like a princess. They're usually disposed of to a title or some little thing like that, aren't they?" she asked with a laugh which held a sob of terror.
"Look here, Jerry. You're not losing your nerve? You're not going back on me, are you?"
She met his eyes squarely.
"I am not, Dad. The fewer ancestors one has behind one the better ancestor one must make of oneself. When I make a promise I make it to keep. I promised you that if Stephen Courtlandt asked me to marry him I'd say 'Yes.'"
Glamorgan's eyes glistened with satisfaction.
"You have the right idea, Jerry. Here they are now," as the bell rang.
"You meet them. I'll take off my wrap—I'll——" In sudden panic the girl entered her room and closed the door behind her. She leaned against it. Her heart beat like mad. In the process of making the dream of her father's life come true was she wrecking her own life? But he had been such a wonderful father—and—to be honest with herself, the romance and tradition and social standing of the Courtlandt name made an alluring appeal to her. She had envied friends at school and college for their careless references to their grandfathers; her earliest recollection was of a room full of hot, grimy miners in a little home near the coal-fields. To marry into the Courtlandt family in America would be commensurate with marrying into a dukedom in England. She breathed a fervent prayer of thanksgiving that her father's ambition hadn't urged him in that direction, also that character had counted with him before social position when he selected his prospective son-in-law.