In this story, I think the lady, Miss Fairchild, is naive and sheltered. She meets an old friend, Mr. Easton, on a train who is handcuffed to a marshal. They trick her into believing that Mr. Easton is the marshal and the real marshal is the criminal. She believes their lie and doesn’t question it at all because she is upper class. Mr. Easton is upper class too, and Miss Fairchild thinks that another person who is upper class would never commit a crime.
Besides being naive and innocent, Miss Fairchild is impulsive. Miss Fairchild says she wants to move to the west, and she thinks she would live happy forever if she moved. She disregards all of the consequences that could happen, and makes a questionable choice on the spot. She ignores the hassle of moving all her belonging to a completely new place, and having to start a new life.
Miss Fairchild also obviously has never seen any criminals or any experience with them in general. Mr. Easton’s right hand is handcuffed to the marshal’s left hand, which makes sense because Mr. Easton’s dominant hand is his right hand. If he tried anything with his left hand, he would probably fail. Because Miss Fairchild failed to notice this, she was easily fooled.
Her actions in the story prove that Miss Fairchild is naive and ignorant. She doesn’t understand how the world works beyond the upper class. Even so, she has false beliefs about the upper class. She thinks that upper class are noble and are perfect. She is gullible and is easily fooled by others. If someone came to her and tricked her with malicious intent, she would be vulnerable.