ess, to be sure, isn't it?" said the secretary,
twirling his eyeglasses by the cord and looking, as he felt,
interminably bored.

"No, indeed; anything but that," she retorted warmly. "It is grander
than anything I ever imagined. I wish there were a piano in the car.
It makes me fairly ache to set it in some form of expression, and
music is the only form I know."

"I'm glad if it doesn't bore you," he rejoined, willing to agree with
her for the sake of prolonging the interview. "But to me it is nothing
more than a dreary wilderness, as I say; a barren, rock-ribbed gulch
affording an indifferent right of way for two railroads."

"For one," she corrected, in a quick upflash of loyalty for her kin.

The secretary shifted his gaze from the mountains to the maiden and
smiled. She was exceedingly good to look upon--high-bred, queenly, and
just now the fine fire of enthusiasm quickened her pulses and sent the
rare flush to neck and cheek.

Jastrow the cold-eyed, the business automaton, set to go off with a
click at Mr. Somerville Darrah's touch, had ambitions not automatic.
Some day he meant to put the world of business under foot as a
conqueror, standing triumphant on the apex of that pyramid of success
which the Mr. Somerville Darrahs were so painstakingly uprearing. When
that day should come, there would need to be an establishment, a
menage, a queen for the kingdom of success. Summing her up for the
hundredth time since the beginning of the westward flight, he thought
Miss Carteret would fill the requirements passing well.

But this was a divagation, and he pulled himself back to the askings
of the moment, agreeing with her again without reference to his
private convictions.

"For one, I should have said," he amended. "We mean to have it that
way, though an unprejudiced onlooker might be foolish enough to say
that there is a pretty good present prospect of two."

But Miss Carteret was in a contradictory mood. Moreover, she was a
woman, and the way to a woman's confidence does not lie through the
neutral country of easy compliance.

"If you won't take the other side, I will," she said. "There will be
two."

Jastrow acquiesced a second time.

"I shouldn't wonder. Our competitor's road seems to be only a question
of time--a very short time, judging from the number of men turning out
in the track gang down yonder."

Virginia leaned over the railing to look past the car and the dovecote
station shading her eyes