She took the gift and raised it to the light, while her eyes kindled and her lips parted in delight, and as she looked at the pearls, her brother looked at her.

“They are beautiful, aren’t they?” she exclaimed and as she gazed at their well-matched perfection a glow kindled in her cheeks.

“With such gifts,” she murmured softly, “you could buy the souls of many women, mon cher.  If you insist on being a master, at least, you are a generous one.”

Possibly at that moment, back of her delight, there rose a little ghost-like doubt.  He had said, “We shall fight—­but we shall reign together.”  She wondered vaguely how complete would be her participation in that reign.  So far as they had fought, each had won a victory and he had paid a handsome indemnity—­in future how would it be?  Then he took the thing from her and fastened it around her neck and led her very gently to one of the great mirrors, standing at her shoulder and gazing at her through the glass.

“So,” she exclaimed, turning and laying her hands on his shoulders while her eyes twinkled with merriment, “they tell me that you compel men to wear your collar.  Already, I, too, am wearing it.”

“At least,” he laughed back at her, “you will always find it as light and pleasant to wear as pearls.”

At the door he paused and spoke, with no trace of his former dictatorial authority.  His tone was very pleasant and unassuming.  “May I make another suggestion?” he asked, and the girl nodded with smiling eyes.

“You are too fine a woman to need theatric affectations, Mary.  I am proudest of all that we are unalloyed American in blood.  Be American.  Cut out the pidgin English and the interlarding of French idiom and phrases, won’t you?”

She raised her brows, and after a moment’s pause said, “Certainly.  I have no wish to appear affected.  It seemed natural.  The habit had grown on me, but I shall accept that advice, my dear brother.”

CHAPTER VII

Even in the days of his first, forced marches toward fortune, when besides his unshakable plunger’s nerve he stood almost without an asset, Hamilton Burton’s policy had been that the limelight paid, and as he had mounted from moderate success into the millionaire class, and thence into the division rated in a plurality of millions, he had always adhered to the plan of letting nothing which reflected his personality fall below the standards of superlative worth and cost.

At first, he thought of the conspicuousness of wealth as a credential tending to enlarge the scope and standing of its possessor.  In a city whose public is surfeited with a show of splendor, the man who would find himself underscored must pitch such conspicuousness to a scale of rajah-like magnificence.

With a thoroughness born of gigantic gambling instinct Hamilton Burton directed his policy of the outward show and trappings of wealth through every artery of his life and the lives of his family.  Yet, because his taste was discriminating and sound, he was able to combine the maximum effect of expenditure with the simplicity of the artistic and to shun the pitfall of the offensive.