"Why, Madge, were you so discouraged as that?" he asked, feelingly.
"I had reason to be discouraged," she replied, in a low tone. Then she threw back her head, proudly. "You men little know," she continued, half defiantly. "You think weakness one of our prerogatives, and like us almost the better for it. We are meekly to accept our fate, and from soft couches lift our languid eyes in pious resignation. I won't do it; and when a powerful horse is beneath me, carrying me like the wind, I feel that his strength is mine, and that I need not succumb to feminine imbecility or helplessness in any form."
"Brava, Madge!" cried Henry Muir.
"You were born a knight," added Graydon, "and have already made more and better conquests than many celebrated in prose and poetry."
"Oh, no," cried Madge, lifting her eyebrows in comic distress. "I was born a woman to my finger-tips, and never could conquer even myself. I have an awful temper. Graydon, you have already found that out."
"I have found that I had better accept just what you please to be, and fully admit your right to be just what you please," he answered, ruefully.
"What a lovely and reasonable frame of mind!" Mrs. Muir remarked. "Truly, Miss Wildmere is to be congratulated. You have only to stick to such a disposition, and peace will last longer than the moon."
"Oh, Miss Wildmere will prove a rose without a thorn," Madge added, laughing, while under Mr. Muir's eye her face paled perceptibly. "There will never be anything problematical in her single-minded devotion. She has been well and discreetly brought up, and finished by the best society, while poor me!—I had to fly in the face of fate like a virago, and scramble up the best I could in Western wilds. Oh, well, Graydon, don't be alarmed. I'll be a good fellow if you'll take me out riding occasionally."
He began to laugh, and she continued: "I saw you frown when I began my wicked speech. We'll tick off tabooed subjects, and make an index expurgatorius, and then we'll get on famously."
"No need of that," he said. "As far as I am concerned, please consider me fair game."