Tremulous with the excitement of it, she went with the Captain to
several of the largest and most sumptuous establishments on State
Street. And Lucius, who accompanied them, ostensibly to be of service to
his master, was of the greatest service to his mistress, he was so
quiet, so unobtrusive, so thoroughly the footman in appearance, so
helpful, and so masterful, in fact; a faint shake of his head, a nod, a
gesture decided momentous questions.

The girl, sitting there surrounded by scurrying clerks and saleswomen,
had a return of her bewilderment and doubt. "Can it be true that I can
buy any of these cloaks and hats?" she asked herself. What was the magic
that had made her lightest wish realizable? When a splendid cloak fell
round her shoulders, and she looked in the glass at the tall figure
there, she glowed with pride.

"Madam carries a cloak beautifully," the saleswoman said, with
sincerity. "This is our smartest model--perfectly exclusive and new.
Only such a figure as the madam's properly sets it off."

While the women were making measurements for some slight alterations,
Lucius said: "It would be nice if you decided on that automobile, and
took Mrs. Haney to the dinner in it."

Haney's face lighted up. "I will! Sh! not a word. We'll surprise her."

"If you don't mind I'll hustle up a footman's livery."

"So do. Anything goes--for her, Lucius."

Bertha thought she had already rubbed the side of her wonderful lamp to
a polish. But under the almost hypnotic spell of her West-Indian
attendant she bought shoes, hats, hosiery, and toilet articles till her
room looked "like Christmas morning," as Haney said, and yet there was
little that could be called foolish or tawdry. She wore little jewelry,
having resisted Haney's attempt to load her with rings and necklaces.
Miss Franklin had impressed upon her the need of being "simple." When
she put on her dinner-dress and faced him, Mart Haney was humbled to
earth. "Sure, ye're beautiful as an angel!" he exulted, as if addressing
a saint. And as she swept before the tall glass and saw her radiant self
therein, she thought of Ben, and her face flamed with lovely color. "I
wish he could see me now!" she inwardly exclaimed.

Miss Franklin, in writing to her friend, Mrs. Brent, had said: "In a
sense, the Haneys are 'impossible'--he is an ex-gambler, and she is the
daughter of a woman who kept a miner's boarding-house in the mountains.
But this sounds worse than it really