But before she could accept or decline the challenge, it had become useless.

A murmur of youthful voices struck her ear, and she suddenly stood upright and transfixed in the carriage.

For lounging down slowly towards them out of the dim green aisles of the arbored wheat, lost in themselves and the shimmering veil of their seclusion, came the engineer, Thomas Bent, and on his arm, gazing ingenuously into his face, the figure of Adele,--her own perfect daughter.
"I don't think, my dear," said Mr.Mallory, as the anxious Rose flew into his arms on his return to San Jose, a few hours later, "that it will be necessary for you to go back again to Major Randolph's before we leave.

I have said 'Good-by' for you and thanked them, and your trunks are packed and will be sent here.

The fact is, my dear, you see this affair of the earthquake and the disaster to the artesian well have upset all their arrangements, and I am afraid that my little girl would be only in their way just now." "And you have seen Mr.Dawson--and you know why he sent for you ?" asked the young girl, with nervous eagerness.
"Ah, yes," said Mr.Mallory thoughtfully, "THAT was really important.
You see, my child," he continued, taking her hand in one of his own and patting the back of it gently with the other, "we think, Dawson and I, of taking over the major's ranch and incorporating it with the Excelsior in one, to be worked on shares like the Excelsior; and as Mrs.Randolph is very anxious to return to the Atlantic States with her children, it is quite possible.