." If she married, the estate and property was to be held
distinct from her husband's, inalienable under the "Married Woman's
Property Act," and subject during her life only to her own control and
personal responsibilities as a trader.

The intense disgust and discomfiture of her parents, who had expected to
more actively participate in their brother's fortune, may be imagined.
But it was not equal to their fury when Josephine, instead of providing
for them a separate maintenance out of her abundance, simply offered to
transfer them and her brother to her own house on a domestic but not
a business equality. There being no alternative but their former
precarious shiftless life in their "played-out" claim in the valley,
they wisely consented, reserving the sacred right of daily protest and
objurgation. In the economy of Burnt Ridge Ranch they alone took it upon
themselves to represent the shattered domestic altar and its outraged
Lares and Penates. And so conscientiously did they perform their task
as even occasionally to impede the business visitor to the ranch, and to
cause some of the more practical neighbors seriously to doubt the young
girl's commercial wisdom. But she was firm. Whether she thought her
parents a necessity of respectable domesticity, or whether she regarded
their presence in the light of a penitential atonement for some previous
disregard of them, no one knew. Public opinion inclined to the latter.

The black line of ridge faded out with her abstraction, and she
turned from the window and lit the lamp on her desk. The yellow light
illuminated her face and figure. In their womanly graces there was no
trace of what some people believed to be a masculine character, except
a singularly frank look of critical inquiry and patient attention in her
dark eyes. Her long brown hair was somewhat rigidly twisted into a knot
on the top of her head, as if more for security than ornament. Brown
was also the prevailing tint of her eyebrows, thickly-set eyelashes, and
eyes, and was even suggested in the slight sallowness of her complexion.
But her lips were well-cut and fresh-colored and her hands and feet
small and finely formed. She would have passed for a pretty girl, had
she not suggested something more.

She sat down, and began to examine a pile of papers before her with that
concentration and attention to detail which was characteristic of her
eyes, pausing at times with prettily knit brows, and her penholder
b