simplicity.

She was worried about Manley, and she wished that cowboy would come out
of the saloon and bring her lover to her. She had never dreamed of being
treated in this way. No one came near her--and she had secretly expected to
cause something of a flutter in this little town they called Hope.

Surely, young girls from the East, come out to get married to their
sweethearts, weren't so numerous that they should be ignored. If there were
other people in the hotel, they did not manifest their presence, save by
disquieting noises muffled by intervening partitions.

She grew thirsty, but she hesitated to explore the depths of this dreary
abode, in fear of worse horrors than the parlor furniture, and all the
places of refreshment which she could see from the window or the door
looked terribly masculine and unmoral, and as if they did not know there
existed such things as ice cream, or soda, or sherbet.

It was after an hour of this that the tears came, which is saying a good
deal for her courage. It seemed to her then that Manley must be dead. What
else could keep him so long away from her, after three years of impassioned
longing written twice a week with punctilious regularity?

He knew that she was coming. She had telegraphed from St. Paul, and had
received a joyful reply, lavishly expressed in seventeen words instead of
the ten-word limit. And they were to have been married immediately upon her
arrival.

That cowboy had known she was coming; he must also have known why Manley
did not meet her, and she wished futilely that she had questioned him,