"I suppose you see a good deal of Miss Randolph--Miss Adele, I think
you call her?" he remarked tentatively, and with a certain boyish
enthusiasm, which she had never conceived possible to his nature.

"Yes," she replied a little dryly, "she is the only young lady there."
She stopped, remembering Adele's naive description of the man before
her, and said abruptly, "You know her, then?"

"A little," replied the young man, modestly. "I see her pretty often
when I am passing the upper end of the ranch. She's very well brought
up, and her manners are very refined--don't you think so?--and yet she's
just as simple and natural as a country girl. There's a great deal
in education after all, isn't there?" he went on confidentially, "and
although"--he lowered his voice and looked cautiously around him--"I
believe that some of us here don't fancy her mother much, there's no
doubt that Mrs. Randolph knows how to bring up her children. Some people
think that kind of education is all artificial, and don't believe in it,
but I do!"

With the consciousness that she was running away from these people and
the shameful disclosure she had heard last night--with the recollection
of Adele's scandalous interpretation of her most innocent actions and
her sudden and complete revulsion against all that she had previously
admired in that household, to hear this man who had seemed to her a
living protest against their ideas and principles, now expressing them
and holding them up for emulation, almost took her breath away.

"I suppose that means you intend to fix Major Randolph's well for him?"
she said dryly.