She was forever making comparisons, and wondering why she did it. A thousand times she had recalled his ardent glance when, as he told her in unmistakable language the story of his love, he had kindled the first fire in her girlish heart, and it had not gone out.
Of course, he could never be anything to her, and yet, try as she would, she could not forget. Without knowing why, she had conceived a deep interest in railways. She watched the men at work, marked the coming and going of trains in various countries, the inferior train service and accommodation on the continental railways of Europe.
Lately she had been studying the financial reports of the various railways on both sides of the Atlantic, and reading the stock quotations.
This was probably because her father had invested a vast amount of money in a new road in the West. She remembered that she had been eager to have him do this, and now felt a certain amount of responsibility, and so was quietly educating herself.
She often wondered whether the handsome conductor had heard of the new road in which she had half her fortune.
At times she went so far as to fancy herself, when left alone in this unfeeling world, seeking advice from the man who had carried her out of the snow-bank. And then she would ask herself how he could help her, this obscure conductor of a narrow-gauge railroad that wound among the hills and ravines of the Rocky Mountains.
Mr. Landon had left his business in the hands of his solicitors, in whom he had perfect faith, and had given himself over to rest for the past four years. Upon his arrival in London he learned that the new road, in which he had invested, had been roughly handled; not by stock-jobbers, who are the dread of small investors, but by competing lines. They had made the mistake which is so often made, of sending out, as manager, a well-educated, perfectly respectable, handsomely attired, but utterly incompetent son of a bondholder, who didn’t know a stop signal from a three-throw switch. The road had lost money from the start, but a rich and indulgent father had insisted upon keeping the young man as manager, and it was not until a well-known railway king had secured a controlling interest that the young man was permitted to return to his tandem and pink-tea.
Things were going better, lately, he learned, since the road had been in the hands of a “native manager,” and so the capitalist and his charming daughter spent another year in London.
“Papa,” said Miss Landon, from her storm-blanket, one day in mid-ocean, “do you know a great deal of the success of this company is due to the employees?”
“Yes.”