Hope is as blind
as love. She had left the ranch saying to her father and to the foreman,
Lew Hervey: "The bank account is shrinking, but ideals are worth more
than facts and I _shall_ improve the horses on this place." It was a
rather too philosophical speech for one of her years, but Oliver Jordan
had merely shrugged his shoulders and rolled another cigarette; the
crushed leg which, for the past three years, had made him a cripple, had
taught him patience.
Only the foreman had ventured to smile openly. It was no secret that Lew
Hervey disliked the girl heartily. The fall of the horse which made
Jordan a semi-invalid, killed his ambition and self-reliance at the same
instant. Not only was it impossible for him to ride since the accident,
but the freeswinging self-confidence which had made him prosperous
disappeared at the same time; his very thoughts walked slowly on foot
since his fall. Hervey gathered the reins of the ranch affairs more and
more into his own hands and had grown to an almost independent power
when Marianne came home from school. Having studied music and modern
languages, who could have suspected in Marianne either the desire or
the will to manage a ranch, but to Marianne the necessity for following
the course she took was as plain as the palm of an open hand.
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