"Bears up? I should say he did. He looks as if he could assist in steadying the world upon the shoulders of old Atlas," answered Judge Gray happily. "It's a trying position for any man, and some of them only just escape looking craven."
"The man who could stand beside that young woman and look craven would deserve to be hamstrung," was the other's verdict. "Cal, she's enough to turn an old man's head; we can't wonder that a young one's is swimming. And the best of it is that it isn't all looks, it's real beauty to the core. She's rich in the qualities that stand wear in a wearing world—and her goodness isn't the sort that will ever pall on her husband. She'll keep him guessing to the end of time, but the answer will always give him fresh delight in her."
"You analyze her well," admitted Roberta's uncle. "But that's to be expected of a man who's been a pastmaster all his life in understanding and dealing with human nature."
"When it was not too near me, Cal. When it came to the dearest thing I had in the world, I made a mistake with it. It was only when the boy came under this roof that he received the stimulus that has made him what he is. That was sure to tell in the end."
"Ah, but he had your blood in him," declared Calvin Gray heartily.
Thus, all about them, in many quarters, were the young pair affectionately discussed. Not the least eloquent in their praise were the youngest members of the company.
"I say, but I'm proud of my new brother," declared Ted Gray, the picture of youthful elegance, with every hair in place, and a white rose on the lapel of his short evening-jacket. He was playing escort to the prettiest of his girl cousins. "Isn't he a stunner to-night?"
"He always was—that is, since I've known him," responded Esther, Uncle Philip's daughter. "I can't help laughing when I think of the Christmas party last year, and how Rob made us all think he was a poor young man, and she didn't like him at all. All of us girls thought she was so queer not to want to dance with him, when he was so handsome and danced so beautifully. I suppose she was just pretending she didn't care for him."
"Nobody ever'll know when Rob did change her mind about him," Ted assured her. "She can make you think black's green when she wants to."
"Isn't she perfectly wonderful to-night?" sighed the pretty cousin, with a glance from her own home-made frock—in which, however, she looked like a freshly picked rose—to Roberta's bridal gown, shimmering through mistiness, simplicity itself, yet, as the little cousin well knew, the product of such art as she herself might never hope to command. "I always thought she was perfectly beautiful, but she's absolutely fascinating to-night."