“Then you paid dearly, I am afraid, for your lessons in lariat throwing.”
“I thought so until to-day,” he replied, turning to meet her eyes.
They rode on at a smarter gait. She had looked into his clear face, and it seemed boyish for one of whom the world heard so much—for the leader of Italy’s most serious political cause. He was, like her, a noble type of the North’s blue-eyed race; only the blood of some dark-hued genitor told in his hair and color, while her massing tresses had the caprice of gold. They came to a hill and the horses walked again.
“My deliverer, it appears, is Mario Forza, the dangerous man,” she said, with a playful accent of dismay.
“Yes; the title is one with which my friends the enemy have honoured me.”
She leaned forward and patted her horse, saying the while:
“I have it in mind from some writer that to dangerous men the world owes its progress.”
“Do you believe that?” he asked, seriously.
“Yes; in the way that I understand it. Perhaps I do not get the true meaning of my author.”
“One can never be certain of knowing the thought of another,” he said.