left the shop it was with mixed emotions of chagrin and security that
she noticed that her passage through the settlement no longer turned
the heads of its male inhabitants. She reached the outskirts of Indian
Spring and the high-road at about the time Mr. Brace had begun his
fruitless patrol of the main street. Far in the distance a faint
olive-green table mountain seemed to rise abruptly from the plain.
It was the Carquinez Woods. Gathering her spotless skirts beneath her
extemporized brown domino, she set out briskly towards them.

But her progress was scarcely free or exhilarating. She was not
accustomed to walking in a country where "buggy-riding" was considered
the only genteel young-lady-like mode of progression, and its regular
provision the expected courtesy of mankind. Always fastidiously booted,
her low-quartered shoes were charming to the eye, but hardly adapted
to the dust and inequalities of the highroad. It was true that she had
thought of buying a coarser pair at Indian Spring, but once face to face
with their uncompromising ugliness, she had faltered and fled. The sun
was unmistakably hot, but her parasol was too well known and offered
too violent a contrast to the duster for practical use. Once she stopped
with an exclamation of annoyance, hesitated, and looked back. In half
an hour she had twice lost her shoe and her temper; a pink flush took
possession of her cheeks, and her eyes were bright with suppressed rage.
Dust began to form grimy circles around their orbits; with cat-like
shivers she even felt it pervade the roots of her blond hair. Gradually
her breath grew more rapid and hysterical, her smarting eyes became
humid, and at last, encountering two observant horsemen in the road, she
turned and fled, until, reaching the wood, she began to cry.

Nevertheless she waited for the two horsemen to pass, to satisfy herself
that she was not followed; then pushed on vaguely, until she reached a