The girl, on her part naturally enough, was by no means oblivious to the reason of his frequent calls, though she always greeted him with her customary careless, wide-eyed geniality, their acquaintance by now having ripened into the intimacy of teasing, playful badinage, at which pastime, needless to say, both of them excelled.
With an innate delicacy that was only natural and instinctive in one come of his gentle birth and early breeding, he had forborne from ever asking her the reason that she was occupying the comparatively humble position of governess, lady companion, or--as she herself had put it--"what you will," on a ranch. It puzzled him. When he had first met her the year previous she was then apparently traveling in state, plainly, although richly, dressed, with an elderly aunt, who--her disagreeable and snobbish manner notwithstanding--distinctly radiated every indication of imposing worldly affluence.
Anyway, those were the impressions that he had formed in the brief glimpse afforded him of the two ladies on that occasion. On this head he one day casually sounded Dave Trainor, as the two of them lounged in the stable talking cattle and horse, preparatory to the Chinese cook's shrill summons of "Glub pl-i-i-ile!" heralded with the customary knuckle tattoo on an inverted dishpan. Trainor, with a slight touch of reminiscent garrulity--a mannerism of his--and with his usual preface:
"Now, see here; look! I'll tell you how that is, Sergeant," proceeded to enlighten him. "I've known that girl," he began, "and all her family for many years back--ever since she was a little slip of a kid, in fact. I started out in life as a mining engineer. That's my real profession, though I've been in the ranching business now for twenty years or more. It must have been in 'seventy-four, or thereabouts, when I first met her father--Terence O'Malley--in New York. He was a mining stockbroker then, and being more or less mixed up in the same class of business, we drifted together and became pretty chummy. He was a typical harum-scarum Irishman out of Ireland. One of those lovable, brilliant kind of ducks--the life and soul of whatever company he was in. A regular 'Mickey Free.' Of good birth and education, clever and shrewd in his business, but a proper gambler at heart, and impulsive and changeable as the wind. She's very like him in many ways--got all his impulsiveness, witty humor and brogue, but without his selfishness and improvidence. Oh, he was sure some high flier, O'Malley. Made fortunes in one day--lost 'em the next. You know the way they run amuck on the Stock Exchange? He married a New York girl--think her name was Egan. Anyway, _she_ was of Irish extraction, too. This girl--Mary--is the eldest of the family. She's got four brothers, but they all came some years later--there's quite a space in between her and them. Somehow another they were all brought up and received pretty fair educations. The boys have got decent enough positions in various parts of the States--able to keep themselves now, at all events. They're good kids enough, but inclined to be a bit wild--possess a lot of the characteristics of their old man. He died about three years ago--of disappointment and shock, when the final crash came in his fortunes. I guess his heart was weak.