experience. Mrs. Page said
their home was ten miles from the nearest store and the nearest neighbor
was seven miles distant."

"That must have been a dismal life for Dorothy. You say she lived on the
plains from six years of age until three years ago, when she went to the
college? Did she have no other schooling?"

"Oh, yes. Her education was directed at home by a governess of unusual
culture and refinement. I learned also from Mrs. Page that none of the
family make any pretensions to religion, and that the governess was as
irreligious as they."

"What a home!"

"She said that there was no church near them in the West and that
Dorothy had never been in a church up to the time she went off to the
college, and that she doubted if she had ever attended church while
there."

"You make her out a wild girl of the plains," remarked Sterling with a
smile. "I could easily see the traces of it tonight in her open, eager,
almost wild manner, and yet through it all there was a culture, a
sweetness, a loveliness that is indescribable."

Mrs. Sterling continued: "Mrs. Page said that Dorothy, perfectly at home
on the wildest horse, roamed untrammeled over the ranch, and reveled in
its beauty and its freedom. But let me continue the story. At seventeen
she went to Carrollton College and at the end of three years she won her
diploma."

"I'll venture she came out at the head of the list, mother; she is as
bright and sparkling as a diamond."

"You are right, for she took the honors of her class. A year ago Mr.
Page sold his ranch and came here to Kentucky to live, but this is
Dorothy's first sight of her Kentucky home."

CHAPTER II.

DOROTHY'S CONVERSION.

"Oh, a tennis court! How glorious!" exclaimed Dorothy next morning as
she stepped out on the porch and caught her first glimpse of the side
lawn.

Sterling considered it a special providence that no intervening fence
separated the two residences, and nearly every afternoon found him on
the tennis grounds, an eager contestant in the game with Dorothy.

"Good-bye, Mr. Sterling," she said to him one afternoon at the close of
the game. "I must hurry in and do some packing. I shall turn traveler
tomorrow."

"What--going away?" he asked with a startled expression.

"Yes, I am going to Chicago for a few weeks to visit a girl friend."

The light fled from the sky for Sterling. For the next three weeks not
only Dorothy, but the center of the universe seemed to him t