The horse instantly came to a walk.
"That is the other extreme," she continued. "You always go to extremes, as, for instance, your quixotic purpose to go out among the border ruffians."
"Honestly, Miss Marsden," said Hemstead, his laughing face suddenly becoming grave, "you do not now think, in your heart, my purpose to be a home missionary 'quixotic'?"
"I don't know much about my heart, Mr. Hemstead, except that it has always been very perverse. But I now wish I had a better one. You have disturbed the equanimity with which I could do wrong most wofully. I even feel a little guilty for leaving them all this morning, with no explanations."
"It was hardly right, now I think of it," said Hemstead, reflectively.
"Have you just thought of it? How preoccupied you have been! What have you been thinking about? Yes, it was wrong; but as it is the first wicked thing I have caught you in I am quite comforted. I have been hoping all along that you would do something just a little bit encouragingly wicked."
"How little you understand me! My wickedness and consequent twinges of conscience have been my chief sources of trouble thus far."
"O, well, your conscience is like Auntie Jane. A speck of dust gives her the fidgets where other people would not see any dust at all. If your conscience had to deal with my sins there would not be ashes and hair-cloth enough for you."
"What good can ashes, hair-cloth, or any kind of self-punishment, or even self-condemnation, do us?"
"Well, we ought to be sorry, at least."