ountain
with its changing glory in the distance.

A few days before Gardley left for the East he had been offered a
position by Rogers as general manager of his estate at a fine salary,
and after consultation with Margaret he decided to accept it, but the
question of their marriage they had left by common consent unsettled
until Gardley should return and be able to offer his future wife a
record made as fair and clean as human effort could make it after human
mistakes had unmade it. As Margaret worked and waited, wrote her
charming letters to father and mother and lover, and thought her happy
thoughts with only the mountain for confidant, she did not plan for the
future except in a dim and dreamy way. She would make those plans with
Gardley when he returned. Probably they must wait some time before they
could be married. Gardley would have to earn some money, and she must
earn, too. She must keep the Ashland School for another year. It had
been rather understood, when she came out, that if at all possible she
would remain two years at least. It was hard to think of not going home
for the summer vacation; but the trip cost a great deal and was not to
be thought of. There was already a plan suggested to have a summer
session of the school, and if that went through, of course she must stay
right in Ashland. It was hard to think of not seeing her father and
mother for another long year, but perhaps Gardley would be returning
before the summer was over, and then it would not be so hard. However,
she tried to put these thoughts out of her mind and do her work happily.
It was incredible that Arizona should have become suddenly so blank and
uninteresting since the departure of a man whom she had not known a few
short months before.

Margaret had long since written to her father and mother about Gardley's
first finding her in the desert. The thing had become history and was
not likely to alarm them. She had been in Arizona long enough to be
acquainted with things, and they would not be always thinking of her as
sitting on stray water-tanks in the desert; so she told them about it,
for she wanted them to know Gardley as he had been to her. The letters
that had traveled back and forth between New York and Arizona had been
full of Gardley; and still Margaret had not told her parents how it was
between them. Gardley had asked that he might do that. Yet it had been a
blind father and mother who had not long ago read between the line