"A beautiful girl."
"As beautiful as I am?"
"In her way quite as beautiful."
"Why do you say 'in her way?' Beauty must always be beauty."
"It has degrees, Esther Helps is not a lady."
Valentine was silent for half a minute.
"I should like to know her," she said then. "I wonder how much she cares for old Helps."
"Look here, Valentine, Esther Helps is not the least like you. I don't know that she has any romantic attachment for that old man. She is a very ordinary girl—a most commonplace person with just a beautiful face."
"How queerly you speak, Gerald. As if it were something strange for an only daughter to be attached to her father."