er own; her head was high, her step was
firm; it was of just such a walk as hers that Virgil wrote his "_vera
incessu patuit dea_," and she made the young man in the section by
himself think of that very passage as he glanced at her from under his
heavy, bushy eyebrows. She looked, moreover, like a woman with a
capacity for influencing people contrary to their will and judgment, and
with a decided fondness for the exercise of that unpopular function.
There was the air of _grande dame_ about her, despite the simplicity of
her dress, which, though of rich material, was severely plain. She wore
no jewelry. Her hands were snugly gloved, and undisfigured by the
distortions of any ring except the marriage circlet. Her manner attested
her a person of consequence in her social circle and one who realized
the fact. She had repelled, though without rudeness or discourtesy, the
garrulous efforts of the motherly knitter to be sociable. She had
promptly inspired the small, candy-crusted explorer with such awe that
he had refrained from further visits after his first confiding attempt
to poke a sticky finger through the baby's velvety cheek. She had spared
little scorn in her rejection of the _bourgeois_ advances of the
commercial traveller with the languishing eyes of Israel: he confided to
his comrades, in relating the incident, that she was smart enough to see
that it wasn't _her_ he was hankering to know, but the pretty sister by
her side; and when challenged to prove that they _were_ sisters,--a
statement which aroused the scepticism of his shrewd associates,--he had
replied, substantially,--

"How do I know? 'Cause I saw their pass before you was up this morning,
cully. It's for Mrs. Captain Rayner and sister, and they're going out
here to Fort Warrener. That's how I know." And the porter of the car had
confirmed the statement in the sanctity of the smoking-room.

And yet--such is the uncertainty of feminine temperament--Mrs. Rayner
was no more incensed at the commercial "gent" because he had obtruded
his attentions than she was at the young man reading in his own section
because he had refrained. Nearly twenty-four hours had elapsed since
they crossed the Missouri, and in all that time not once had she
detected in him a glance that betrayed the faintest interest in her,
or--still more remarkable--in the unquestionably lovely girl at her
side. Intrusiveness she might resent, but indifference she would and
did. Who was this you