Dorothy Page

Excerpt

CHAPTER I.

DOROTHY ARRIVES.

"You may see her tonight," said Mrs. Sterling to her son Gilbert.

"When does she arrive?"

"At six-twenty this afternoon. They say, son, she is beautiful."

"From what point of the compass does the lovely paragon come?" asked Sterling with a smile.

"She has just graduated from some college in the North. Her father and mother went to be with her in the closing exercises and will bring her home today."

The subject of this conversation was Dorothy Page, whose palatial home was next door to the home of the Sterlings. The two families had become friends as well as neighbors.

"Come over this evening, Sterling, and help me to celebrate the arrival of the family," called out Roland Page from his porch.

Sterling agreed.

At half past eight o'clock, as he entered the library of the Page home, he looked upon what seemed to him the most beautiful girl his imagination had ever pictured. He knew in a moment that he was a captive. As he walked down the front steps after his visit he felt sure that an epoch in his life had occurred.

"A splendid young fellow!" remarked Mr. Page after Sterling had left. "Although he is only twenty-nine years of age, he has in his own right a cool two million-dollar fortune. He inherited it from his father and he himself is one of the most progressive business men in the state and seems bent on using his fortune for the good of society."

"He was very quiet," remarked Dorothy.

Mr. Page's statements concerning Sterling were very true. He might have added that Sterling was an elder in the Presbyterian church and was one of its most devoted members.

Sterling found his mother in the sitting-room on his return home that night.

"Well, son," she said, "how do you like your new neighbor?"

"Mother, don't ask me to describe her," he replied; and then for half an hour he continued talking about her. Before retiring he said:

"Mother, how is it that I have never been told about Miss Page before?"

"Well, son, I have known very little myself. The Pages, you know, have lived here less than a year and Dorothy has never been here before. A few days before Mrs. Page left to bring Dorothy home she told me a good many things about her."

"How long was Miss Page at the college?"

"Three years. The Pages were born in Virginia, but when Dorothy was six years old the father, because of failing health, purchased a large ranch in the West and he moved his family there and became very prosperous."

"She is a child, therefore, of the South and West," said Sterling.

"Yes, she has Southern blood and Western experience. Mrs. Page said their home was ten miles from the nearest store and the nearest neighbor was seven miles distant."

"That must have been a dismal life for Dorothy. You say she lived on the plains from six years of age until three years ago, when she went to the college? Did she have no other schooling?"

"Oh, yes. Her education was directed at home by a governess of unusual culture and refinement. I learned also from Mrs. Page that none of the family make any pretensions to religion, and that the governess was as irreligious as they."

"What a home!"

"She said that there was no church near them in the West and that Dorothy had never been in a church up to the time she went off to the college, and that she doubted if she had ever attended church while there."

"You make her out a wild girl of the plains," remarked Sterling with a smile. "I could easily see the traces of it tonight in her open, eager, almost wild manner, and yet through it all there was a culture, a sweetness, a loveliness that is indescribable."

Mrs. Sterling continued: "Mrs. Page said that Dorothy, perfectly at home on the wildest horse, roamed untrammeled over the ranch, and reveled in its beauty and its freedom. But let me continue the story. At seventeen she went to Carrollton College and at the end of three years she won her diploma."

"I'll venture she came out at the head of the list, mother; she is as bright and sparkling as a diamond."

"You are right, for she took the honors of her class....