uperseded quickly by disappointment, whereat Rosalind
giggled softly and hid her tousled head in a pillow.

"The impertinent brute! Rosalind, he dared to look directly at me, and I
am sure he would have winked at me in another instant! A gentleman!" she
said, coldly.

"Don't be severe, Aunty. I'm sure he is a gentleman, for all his
curiosity. See--there he is, riding away without so much as looking
back!"

Half an hour later the two women entered the dining-room just as a big,
rather heavy-featured, but handsome man, came through the opposite door.
He greeted both ladies effusively, and smilingly looked at his watch.

"You over-slept this morning, ladies--don't you think? It's after ten.
I've been rummaging around town, getting acquainted. It's rather an
unfinished place, after the East. But in time--" He made a gesture,
perhaps a silent prophecy that one day Manti would out-strip New York, and
bowed the ladies to seats at table, talking while the colored waiter moved
obsequiously about them.

"I thought at first that your father was over-enthusiastic about Manti,
Miss Benham," he continued. "But the more I see of it the firmer becomes
my conviction that your father was right. There are tremendous
possibilities for growth. Even now it is a rather fertile country. We
shall make it hum, once the railroad and the dam are completed. It is a
logical site for a town--there is no other within a hundred miles in any
direction."

"And you are to anticipate the town's growth--isn't that it, Mr.
Corrigan?"

"You put it very comprehensively, Miss Benham; but perhaps it would be
better to say that I am the advance agent of prosperity--that sounds
rather less mercenary. We must not allow the impression to get abroad that
mere money is to be the motive power behind our efforts."

"But money-making is the real motive, after all?" said Miss Benham,
dryly.

"I submit there are several driving forces in life, and that money-making
is not the least compelling of them."

"The other forces?" It seemed to Corrigan that Miss Benham's face was very
serious. But Agatha, who knew Rosalind better than Corrigan knew her, was
aware that the girl was merely demurely sarcastic.

"Love and hatred are next," he said, slowly.

"You would place money-making before love?" Rosalind bantered.

"Money adds the proper flavor to love," laughed Corrigan. The laugh was
laden with subtle significance and he looked straight at the girl, a deep
fire