“I know what you mean,” his daughter said, with a tremulous little laugh and shaking her head. “Seeing so many about us falling into the toils of Dan Cupid, you think I perhaps imagine I have fixed my affections upon some particular object. Is that it, Major?” He nodded, a quizzical little smile on his lips. “No” she said. “It isn’t anywhere near as simple as that. I—I do love him I believe. He is the only man I have ever really thought twice about. He is the center of all my thoughts now, and has been for a long time.” “But—but who is he?” the major gasped. “Garry Knapp.” Her father repeated the name slowly and his expression of countenance certainly displayed amazement. “Did I ever see the young man?” “No.” “Your aunt—one of your cousins’ friends?” “Dear Daddy,” said Dorothy, frankly and smiling a little. “I have done something not at all as you would expect cautious little me to do. I have picked a man—and, oh, he is a man, Daddy!—right out of the great mob of folks. Nobody introduced us. We just—well, _met_.” “The young man has been spoken of by Tavia, I believe,” said Major Dale, quite cheerfully. “I remember now. Mr. Knapp. You met him at the hotel in New York?” “Before we got to the hotel. In the train I noticed him—vaguely. On the platform where we changed cars at that Manhattan Transfer place, I saw him better. I—I never was so much interested in a man before.” Major Dale looked at her rather solemnly for a moment. “Are you sure, my dear, it is anything more than fancy?” “Quite sure.” “And—and—_he_——” The man’s voice actually trembled. Dorothy looked at him again, dropped the sewing from her lap and suddenly flung her arms about his neck. “Oh, my dear!” she murmured, her face hidden. “I know he loves me, too. I am sure of it! Let me tell you.” Breathlessly, her voice quavering a little but full of an element of happiness that fairly thrilled her listener, she related all the incidents—even the petty details—of her acquaintance with Garford Knapp, of Desert City. So clear was her picture of the young man that the major saw him in his mind’s eye just as Garry appeared to Dorothy Dale. She went over every little thing that had happened in New York in connection with the young Westerner. She told of her own mean suspicions and how they had risen from a feeling of pique and jealousy that never in her life had she experienced before. “That was a rather small way for me to show real feeling for a person. But it caught me unprepared,” said Dorothy, with a full-throated laugh although her eyes were full of tears. “I do not believe I am naturally of a jealous disposition; and I should never let such a feeling get the better of me again. It has cost me too much.” She went on and told the major of the incidents that followed and how Garry Knapp had gone away so hastily without her speaking to him again.