she had surrendered completely.  The girl was fine all through, this she could see as soon as she looked at her.  She liked her noble though not beautiful face, with the broad clear forehead from which the soft dark hair was brushed back so simply, and, most of all, she liked the charm and sympathy in her voice.  George had chosen well, and if she could trust his choice, why could she not trust him to be true to it?

“I wonder if you would like to put on your hat and come with me?” she asked, obeying an impulse.  “I’m going to drive up to Patty’s with some curtains for her bedroom.”

“Oh, I’d love to,” replied Gabriella with eagerness, for she hated inaction, and it was impossible to spend a whole afternoon merely thinking about one’s happiness.  “It won’t take me a minute to get ready.”

While she put on her hat and coat, Mrs. Fowler watched her thoughtfully, saying once:  “It is quite cool, you’d better bring your furs, dear.”

When Gabriella answered frankly, “I haven’t any, I never had any furs in my life,” a tender expression crept into the rather hard blue eyes of her mother-in-law, and she said quickly:  “Well, I’ve a set of white fox that I am too old to wear, and you shall have it.”

“But what of Patty?” asked Gabriella, for she had grown up thinking of other people and she couldn’t break the habit of twenty years in a minute.

“Oh, Patty has all the furs she’ll need for years.  We spent every penny we had on Patty before she married,” answered Mrs. Fowler, but she was saying to herself:  “Yes, the girl is the right wife for him.  I am sure she is the right wife for him.”

The Park was brilliant with falling leaves, and as they drove beneath a perfect sky beside a lake which sparkled like sapphire, Gabriella, lifting her chin above the white furs, said rapturously, “Oh, I am so happy!  Life is so beautiful!”

A shadow stole into the eyes with which Mrs. Fowler was watching the passing carriages, and the fixed sweetness about her mouth melted into an expression of yearning.  Tears veiled the faces of the women who spoke to her in passing, for she was thinking of her first drive in the Park with her husband, and though her marriage had been a happy one, she felt a strange longing as if she wanted to weep.

“I never saw such wonderful horses,” said Gabriella.  “Cousin Jimmy would be wild about them;” and she added impetuously, “But the hats aren’t in the least like the one I am wearing.”  A misgiving seized her as she realized that her dresses, copied by Miss Polly with ardent fidelity from a Paris fashion book, were all hopelessly wrong.  She wondered if her green silk gown with the black velvet sleeves was different in style from the gowns the other women were wearing under their furs?  Had sleeves of a different colour from the bodice, which Miss Polly considered the last touch of elegance, really gone out of fashion?

The carriage passed out of the Park, and turning into one of the streets on the upper West Side stopped presently before a small dingy apartment house, where a dozen ragged children were playing leapfrog on the pavement.