Midbranch; and her mother, long since dead, had called her Roberta,
which was as near as she could come to the name of her only brother.

Miss Roberta's father was a man whose mind and time were entirely given
up to railroads; and although he nominally lived in New York, he was,
for the greater part of the year, engaged in endeavors to forward his
interests somewhere west of the Mississippi. Two or three months of the
winter were generally spent in his city home. At these times he had his
daughter with him, but the rest of the year she lived with her uncle,
whose household she directed with much good will and judgment. The old
gentleman did not keep her all the summer at Midbranch. He knew what was
necessary for a young lady who had been educated in Germany and
Switzerland, and who had afterwards made a very favorable impression in
Paris and London; and so, during the hot weather, he took her with him
to one of the fashionable Southern resorts, where they always stayed
exactly six weeks.

The gentleman who was sitting on the other side of the platform, with
his face turned towards her, had known Miss Roberta for a year or more,
having met her at the North, and also in the Virginia mountains; and
being now on a visit to the Green Sulphur Springs, about four miles from
Midbranch, he rode over to see her nearly every day. There was nothing
surprising in this, because the Green Sulphur, once a much frequented
resort, had seen great changes, and now, although the end of the regular
season had not arrived, it had Mr Lawrence Croft for its only guest.
There was a spacious hotel there; there was a village of cottages of
varying sizes; there were buildings for servants and managers; there was
a ten-pin alley and a quiet ground; there were arbors and swings; and a
square hole in a stone slab, through which a little pool of greenish
water could be seen, with a tin cup, somewhat rusty, lying by it. But