Don Joaquin did not at all desire her to do that.
"No necessity," he said hastily; "Mariquita shall have the jacket. I will take the furs and give the order myself."
"Only be sure to insist that the lining is silk. They have some silvery gray silk that would just go with those furs. And Mariquita would pay good dressing. Her style wants it. She's solid, you know."
Mariquita did get the jacket. But it was not of the fur Sarella had meant—her father knew by that time the value of that sort of fur. And Sarella knew that she had made it quite clear which sort she had asked him to supply. She was amused by his craftiness, and though a little ashamed of him, she was readier to forgive his stinginess than if it had been illustrated in a garment for herself. After all, it was perhaps as well that Mariquita's should not be so valuable as her own.
"And married women," she reminded herself, "do have to dress handsomer than girls. And Mariquita will never know the difference."
"I suggested," she told her cousin, "the same gray fur as mine. But I daresay a brown fur will suit your coloring better, and it's younger. Anything gray (in the fur line) can be worn with mourning, and nothing's so elderly as mourning."
It was the first present her father had ever given Mariquita, and she thanked him with a warmth of gratefulness that ought to have made him ashamed. But Don Joaquin was not subject to the unpleasant consciousness of shame. On the contrary, he thought with less complacence of Mariquita's thanks than of the fact that he had given her a necessary winter garment at a profit—for he had taken the other furs to the store and received for them a substantial cash payment over and above the clearing of the charges for making up and lining the commoner skins of which the winter jacket was made.
"I wonder," thought Sarella, "what that lining is? It looks silky, but I'm sure it isn't silk. I daresay it's warmer. And after all, Gore can get it changed for silk when it's worn out; the fur will outlast two linings at least. It's not so delicate as mine. I'm afraid mine'll flatten. I must look to that."