"Why shouldn't I be?" she answered. "I've got a sound body, a clear brain, an honest name and a clean heart. Isn't that enough?" She looked up smiling.
He hesitated, for her point of view was new to him. "Most people would include money in the list, I've got all the things you say make you happy, and yet——"
"You haven't the money." She had finished his sentence for him.
"You don't look as if it bothered you a great deal," she added shyly.
He was silent. For once he had been separated from his birthright and considered apart from his inheritance. The sensation was distinctly novel. "Do you ever think," she went on, "of the house you would build if you had all the money you wanted?"
"I used to, when I was a very little boy," he answered with an effort.
"I do even now, it's one of my daydreams and I call it my House Beautiful," she said.
He asked a timid question and something of the expression he had seen on her face in the firelight the evening before, returned to it. Had she been dreaming of her "House Beautiful" then?
The mellow tones of her voice sounded full and soft in his ears. She was telling of a house of grey stone with wide porches and massive columns. She spoke of the reception hall, the stately stairway, and the tiger skin rug in the drawing-room.
A tower room with windows facing both the sunset and the sea, beautiful things in costly woods, and fabrics in white and gold.