Young Elizabeth "Lilly" Kebble came to her daddy's funeral dressed like a princess - in a black velvet dress with rosy-red hearts and red shoes.
Five-year-old Elizabeth was also the only one of the four Kebble children who did not say in public just how much she loved her father at Tuesday's St George's Cathedral funeral service.
She is, however, perhaps the person who most poignantly expresses the Kebble family's grief and loss.
At the end of the "thanksgiving celebration" and service for the life of her father, Brett Kebble, she was towered over by the rest of the family, as she walked behind the coffin. The air was thick with pungent incense.
And then her mommy, Ingrid, picked her up, revealing her striking blue eyes and long blonde hair - daddy's little princess.
She had listened attentively as important grown-ups found the kindest words to say about Kebble, 41.
They had called him "warrior", "our young captain" and a "real man", who had been at the forefront of black economic empowerment and who had "chosen to support" the building of a black "economic citadel".
She heard how he supported a feeding scheme for thousands of schoolchildren and how he was a true patron of the arts.
But to her, like her siblings said at the service, Brett Kebble will simply be the father she lost too soon.
A family spokesperson said it was the family's wish that the children not be exposed too much to the gaze of the media.
During the funeral service Lilly had listened to her sister Hannah, 9, call Kebble a "loving husband and father" and speak of his love for "cracking jokes" and his wonderful sense of humour.
She had heard her brothers Andrew, 11, and Matthew, 13, say how their dad had "put everyone before himself", how he had "played the piano like a pro", "cooked like a chef" and how they had lost a father who could have taught them so much.
Andrew said: "Some people made negative comments about him (Brett) but they didn't know him as we did."
Lilly, like her sister, will not have her dad fussing over her and giving "that speech" to suitors coming knocking for dates in years to come.
He will not be part of those frantic moments in Grade 12, when she chooses her matric ball gown and studies for her final exams.
Lilly will not have the opportunity to learn the finer points of art, etiquette, dating, driving, politics, power - life - from him.
In church on Tuesday she heard her grandpa Roger Kebble's eulogy, delivered by family friend David Gleason, in which he promised to do everything in his power to get to the bottom of his son's shooting in a Johannesburg suburb last week.
Lilly listened as the Minister in the Office of the President, Essop Pahad, slammed what he called an insensitive media by speculating about Brett Kebble and alleged business improprieties.
Pahad said Kebble's family, especially his children who "have a long life ahead of them", were the victims of a media insensitive to their pain.
"The colour and verve of (South African) public life is all the poorer for his passing," Pahad said.
We doubt whether Lilly has been allowed to watch, or understands, the television news footage of her father's death scene, which has been shown over and over. We don't know whether she heard the words "Melrose", referring to the Johannesburg street in which he had been killed, and "hit", referring to the way he died.
We don't know if she knew any of the people who often stood with outstretched hands for personal loans and other financial assistance from her dad.
Her opinion is more subjective than those journalists who have been covering her father's death, or the image consultants he hired to deal with nagging rumours of dodgy business practices, including the suggestions that Kebble liberally dispensing patronage to those ANC members he could expect to scratch his back when the time came.
We doubt that she saw the Sunday newspaper, which showed her dad impeccably dressed in a black jacket, white shirt and red-and-white dotted tie, and which described him as a "debt-laden tycoon".
Lilly doesn't understand the media angles being worked - even how some have tried to hang her father's murder on a political conspiracy theory involving a plot to stop Jacob Zuma from ascending to the presidency.
To her Brett Kebble the "flamboyant", "mining magnate", "tycoon" was simply daddy.
And on Tuesday in the church as strangers and friends looked on, this brave little girl said her silent goodbye.
Maybe it will be only in years to come that she'll realise the extent of her loss.