"Jeanette, don't you like to be rich? I guess you are the richest girl in this country. Doesn't that sound good to you?"
"No, father," she answered simply, and continued, "What can I do with all that money?"
"Marry some man who's got sense enough to double it, and double it," cried Barclay, harshly. "Then there'll be no question but that you'll be the richest people in the world."
"And then what?" asked the girl.
"Then—then," he cried, "make the people in this world stand around—that's what."
"But, father," she said as she put her hand on his arm, "what if I don't want them to stand around? Why should I have to bother about it?"
"Oh," he groaned, "your grandmother has been filling you full of nonsense." He did not speak for a time, and at length she rose to go to bed. "Jeanette," he cried so suddenly that it startled her, "are you still moping after Neal Ward? Do you love him? Do you want me to go and get him for you?"
The girl stood by her father's chair a moment and then answered colourlessly: "No, father, I don't want you to get him for me. I am not moping for him, as you call it."
Her desolate tone reached some chord in his very heart, for he caught her hand, and put it to his cheek and said softly, "But she loves him—my poor little girl loves him?"
She tried to pull away her hand and replied, in the same dead voice: "Oh, well—that doesn't matter much, I suppose. It's all over—so far as I am concerned." She turned to leave him, and he cried:—