He feared to appear ridiculous.

This woman was making him timid.
Looking at her with admiring eyes, he noted the great changes that had been made in the adornment of her person.

She was no longer clad in the dark tailor-made in which he had first seen her.

She was wearing a blue and white silk gown with a handsome fur over her shoulders and a cluster of purple heron feathers on top of her wide hat.
The black hand-bag that had always accompanied her on her journeys had been replaced by a gold-meshed one of showy richness,--Australian gold of a greenish tone like an overlay of Florentine bronze.

In her ears were two great, thick emeralds, and on her fingers a half dozen diamonds whose facets twinkled in the sunlight.