The underlying goodness of her nature was touched.
Should she let a momentary fault--if it were not really, after all, only a misunderstanding--rise between her and them at such a moment?
She turned and hurried quickly towards the house.
Hastening onward, she found time, however, to wonder also why these common men--she now included even the young inventor in that category--were all so rude and uncivil to HER! She had never before been treated in this way; she had always been rather embarrassed by the admiring attentions of young men (clerks and collegians) in her Atlantic home, and, of professional men (merchants and stockbrokers) in San Francisco.

It was true that they were not as continually devoted to her and to the nice art and etiquette of pleasing as Emile,--they had other things to think about, being in business and not being GENTLEMEN,--but then they were greatly superior to these clowns, who took no notice of her, and rode off without lingering or formal leave-taking when their selfish affairs were concluded.

It must be the contact of the vulgar earth--this wretched, cracking, material, and yet ungovernable and lawless earth--that so depraved them.

She felt she would like to say this to some one--not her father, for he wouldn't listen to her, nor to the major, who would laughingly argue with her, but to Mrs.Randolph, who would understand her, and perhaps say it some day in her own sharp, sneering way to these very clowns.

With those gentle sentiments irradiating her blue eyes, and putting a pink flush upon her fair cheeks, Rose reached the garden with the intention of rushing sympathetically into Mrs.Randolph's arms.