Transplanted by Gertrude Atherton — Read

But a year later, as Tiny had predicted, Lee wrote to Cecil Maundrell and gave him his freedom.

It is little that a girl learns of the world in San Francisco: where the home-bred youths are a remarkable compound of guile and ingenuousness, alcohol and tea-cakes, and where the more highly-seasoned Easterner rarely tarries. But that little had taught Lee several things. She had not only been the belle of her set, but her charm was potent and direct, and she had caught more than one glimpse of the passions of men. Randolph's had waxed with her growing consciousness of her power, and upon two memorable occasions the fiery impetuosity of his Southern blood had routed his practical Americanism, his aversion to gravity. Tom Brannan, whose mouth and heart grew no smaller with the years, and who was by no means a fool, although somewhat rattle-brained, had shown himself capable of imbecility. Ned Geary, clever, versatile, indolent, who employed his larger energies in protest against his father's insistence that he should make money instead of spending it, and who was the uncertain object of many maidenly hopes, not only proposed regularly to Lee by word and letter, but was inspired to excellent rhyme. He was famed for breaking social engagements of the most exacting nature, and was at pains to assure Lee that the nice precision with which he adjusted his pleasure to his politeness whenever herself was in question was the signal proof of the depth of his feelings. He even answered Mrs. Montgomery's notes when she invited him to dinner, and his fair gay face was never absent from her "evenings."