thought she was--the first member of the party to dress and steal out
upon the railed platform to look abroad upon the wondrous scene in the
canyon.

But her reverie, trance-like in its wordless enthusiasm, was presently
broken by a voice behind her--the voice, namely, of Mr. Arthur
Jastrow.

"What a howling wilderness, to be sure, isn't it?" said the secretary,
twirling his eyeglasses by the cord and looking, as he felt,
interminably bored.

"No, indeed; anything but that," she retorted warmly. "It is grander
than anything I ever imagined. I wish there were a piano in the car.
It makes me fairly ache to set it in some form of expression, and
music is the only form I know."

"I'm glad if it doesn't bore you," he rejoined, willing to agree with
her for the sake of prolonging the interview. "But to me it is nothing
more than a dreary wilderness, as I say; a barren, rock-ribbed gulch
affording an indifferent right of way for two railroads."

"For one," she corrected, in a quick upflash of loyalty for her kin.

The secretary shifted his gaze from the mountains to the maiden and
smiled. She was exceedingly good to look upon--high-bred, queenly, and
just now the fine fire of enthusiasm quickened her pulses and sent the
rare flush to neck and cheek.

Jastrow the cold-eyed, the business automaton, set to go off with a