"Whatever your father thought of in permitting you to come out here is a mystery to me," pursued Agatha severely, as she fussed with her hair. "It was like him, though, to go to all this trouble--for me--merely to satisfy your curiosity about the country. I presume we shall be returning shortly." "Don't be impatient, Aunty," said the girl, still gazing out of the window. "I intend to stretch my legs before I return." "Mercy!" gasped Agatha; "such language! This barbaric country has affected you already, my dear. Legs!" She summoned horror into her expression, but it was lost on Rosalind, who still gazed out of the window. Indeed, from a certain light in the girl's eyes it might be adduced that she took some delight in shocking Agatha. "I shall stay here quite some time, I think," said Rosalind. "Daddy said there was no hurry; that he might come out here in a month, himself. And I have been dying to get away from the petty conventionalities of the East. I am going to be absolutely human for a while, Aunty. I am going to 'rough it'--that is, as much as one can rough it when one is domiciled in a private car. I am going to get a horse and have a look at the country. And Aunty--" here the girl's voice came chokingly, as though some deep emotion agitated her "--I am going to ride 'straddle'!" She did not look to see whether Agatha had survived this second shock--but Agatha had survived many such shocks. It was only when, after a silence of several minutes, Agatha spoke again, that the girl seemed to remember there was anybody in the compartment with her. Agatha's voice was laden with contempt: "Well, I don't know what you see in this outlandish place to compensate for what you miss at home." The girl did not look around. "A man on a black horse, Aunty," she said. "He has passed here twice. I have never seen such a horse. I don't remember to have ever seen a man quite like the rider. He looks positively--er--_heroish_! He is built like a Roman gladiator, he rides the black horse as though he had been sculptured on it, and his head has a set that makes one feel he has a mind of his own. He has furnished me with the only thrill that I have felt since we left New York!" "He hasn't seen _you_!" said Agatha, coldly; "of course you made sure of _that_?" The girl looked mischievously at the older woman. She ran her fingers through her hair--brown and vigorous-looking--then shaded her eyes with her hands and gazed at her reflection in a mirror near by. In deshabille she looked fresh and bewitching. She had looked like a radiant goddess to "Brand" Trevison, when he had accidentally caught a glimpse of her face at the window while she had been watching him. He had not known that the lady had just awakened from her beauty sleep. He would have sworn that she needed no beauty sleep. And he had deliberately ridden past the car again, hoping to get another glimpse of her. The girl smiled.