"Listen to that! She's ten times more English than Mrs. Enderby." "I'm not; but I long for the civilized instead of the wild. I like comfort and society." "So do I," returned he. "Yes; the comfort of an easy-chair on the porch and the society of your forest rangers. This ranch life is all very well for a summer outing, but to be tied down here all the year round is to be denied one's birthright as a modern." All this more or less cheerful complaint expressed the minds of many others who live amid these superb scenes. When autumn comes, when the sky is gray and the peaks are hid in mist, they long for the music, the lights, the comfort of the city; but when the April sun begins to go down in a smother of crimson and flame, and the mountains loom with epic dignity, or when at dawn the air is like some divine flood descending from the unstained mysterious heights, then the dweller in the foot-hills cries out: "How fortunate we are! Here is health and happiness! Here poverty is unknown!" One side of the girl was of this strain, the other was of the character described by her hostess. She began to see that Ross Cavanagh was fitted for higher duties than those of forest guard. Mrs. Redfield was becoming more and more interested in this child, who had not merely the malodorous reputation of her mother to contend with, but the memory of a traitorous sire to live down; and when Lee Virginia went to her room to pack her bag, the wife turned to her husband and said: "What are we to think of heredity when we see a thoroughly nice girl like that rise out of the union of a desperado with a vixen?" Redfield answered: "It is unaccountable. I knew her father well; he was a reckless daredevil, with less real courage in him than there is in old Lize; but I can't tell the girl that. She is sufficiently humiliated by her mother; she takes comfort in the thought that her father at least was brave and heroic." "I don't believe in heredity as I did once," his wife resumed. "Aren't scientific men rather divided about it?" "Yes, there are those who deny that there is any inheritance of the spirit, of character, insisting that the laws of transmission affect the body only. Lee is certainly like her father in looks. He was a handsome rascal." "Ross is terribly smitten with her." Redfield coughed, uneasily. "I hope not. Of course he admires her, as any man must. She's physically attractive, very attractive, and, besides, Ross is as susceptible as a cow-puncher. He was deeply impressed the first time he saw her, I could see that." "I didn't like his going out on the veranda with her last night," continued Mrs. Redfield, "and when they came in her eyes and color indicated that he'd been saying something exciting to her. Hugh, Ross Cavanagh must not get involved with that girl. It's your duty as his superior to warn him." "He's fully grown, my dear, and a bit dictatorial on his own part. I'm a trifle timid about cutting in on his private affairs."