I do not think the few masculine wayfarers of that locality objected
to it; indeed, some had betrayed an indiscreet admiration, and had
curiously followed the invitation of Miss Kate's warmly-colored figure
until they had encountered the invincible indifference of Miss Kate's
cold gray eyes. With these manifestations her brother-in-law did
not concern himself; he had perfect confidence in her unqualified
disinterest in the neighboring humanity, and permitted her to wander in
her solitary picturesqueness, or accompanied her when she rode in her
dark green habit, with equal freedom from anxiety.
For Miss Scott, although only twenty, had already subjected most of
her maidenly illusions to mature critical analyses. She had voluntarily
accompanied her sister and mother to California, in the earnest
hope that nature contained something worth saying to her, and was
disappointed to find she had already discounted its value in the pages
of books. She hoped to find a vague freedom in this unconventional
life thus opened to her, or rather to show others that she knew how
intelligently to appreciate it, but as yet she was only able to express
it in the one detail of dress already alluded to. Some of the men, and
nearly all the women, she had met thus far, she was amazed to find,
valued the conventionalities she believed she despised, and were
voluntarily assuming the chains she thought she had thrown off. Instead
of learning anything from them, these children of nature had bored her
with eager questionings regarding the civilization she had abandoned, or
irritated her with crude imitations of it for her benefit. "Fancy,"
she had written to a friend in Boston, "my calling on Sue Murphy, who
remembered the Donner tragedy, and who once shot a grizzly that was
prowling round her cabin, and think of her begging me to lend her my
sack for a pattern, and wanting to know if 'polonays' were still worn."
She remembered more bitterly the romance that had tickled her earlier
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