“He says they are too expensive.”
Gabriel smiled, but the girl’s face was unceasingly solemn. Her expression, indeed, appeared to partake of the perpetual seriousness of an earnest nature. A calm, unconscious melancholy shone forth from her mind like a glimmer of sunlight reflected from some golden shrine.
“Your father must be something of a cynic.”
“My father is poor.”
“Only in gold, perhaps.”
“In mind, too,” she said, with transcendent and ingenuous candor.
“But you love him?”
“I do not know,” she retorted, with a certain contemplative sincerity. “I have only read of love. I know Britomart and Florimel. I do not think Britomart would have loved my father.”
“Why not?”
“I do not know.”