“Dared! I didn't know that was your failing. I don't believe you even thought of it.”
“Nevertheless, the idea occurred to me, and terrified me,” said Austen.
“Why?” she asked, turning upon him suddenly. “Why did it terrify you?”
“I should have been presuming upon an accidental acquaintance, which I had no means of knowing you wished to continue,” he replied, staring at his horse's head.
“And I?” Victoria asked. “Presumption multiplies tenfold in a woman, doesn't it?”
“A woman confers,” said Austen.
She smiled, but with a light in her eyes. This simple sentence seemed to reveal yet more of an inner man different from some of those with whom her life had been cast. It was an American point of view—this choosing to believe that the woman conferred. After offering herself as his passenger Victoria, too, had had a moment of terror: the action had been the result of an impulse which she did not care to attempt to define. She changed the subject.
“You have been winning laurels since I saw you last summer,” she said. “I hear incidentally you have made our friend Zeb Meader a rich man.”
“As riches go, in the town of Mercer,” Austen laughed. “As for my laurels, they have not yet begun to chafe.”
Here was a topic he would have avoided, and yet he was curious to discover what her attitude would be. He had antagonized her father, and the fact that he was the son of Hilary Vane had given his antagonism prominence.