managed to draw Nina aside. He looked down at her with an expression
half-quizzical, half-serious. "This is about the time we come to the
'great divide,'" he said. "Your trail lies to the palaces of the Old
World; mine to dig holes in remote corners of the New. You'll write me,
won't you? My letters will be pretty dull, I am afraid--same old story:
a laborer's day, and occasionally a Sunday's ride to get the mail at the
nearest ranch."

"Then I'll make mine doubly thick--so they will seem like packets. I may
even write that famous journal and send it in instalments to you!" Then
suddenly the banter died of her eyes and voice and she said
half-sentimentally: "Dear old Jack! Most of every one I shall miss you.
I hope things will go famously for you. You have my address?"

"Yes; and mine is Breakstone, Arizona, care of Burk Mining Company.
Well," he smiled, "good hunting to both of us!"

There was still plenty of time before the ship sailed, but Mr. Randolph
was leaving. He had been talking with another financier who was seeing
his own family off, and now came up between his daughter and Derby.

"If you will go with me now," he said to the latter, "we can talk over
the Louisiana sulphur proposition on the way to my office." Then he
turned to Nina: "It is barely possible you may see John in Italy before
the winter is over."

Nina raised her eyebrows as she looked at Derby. "You said you were
going to Arizona!" she said accusingly.

But Derby's expression showed that he was as much in the dark as she.