you even consider such a possibility? If I
were a man I know I couldn't." She turned upon him a glance so clear and
untroubled by either conscious vanity or evasion that he was hopelessly
convinced of the truth of her statement, and she went on in a slightly
lowered tone, "You have no right to ask me such a question,--but perhaps
for that reason I am willing to answer you. There is none. Hush! For a
good rider you are setting a poor example to the others, by crowding
me towards the bank. Go forward and talk to Phemie, and tell her not to
worry Mrs. Ashwood's horse nor race with her; I don't think he's quite
safe, and Mrs. Ashwood isn't accustomed to using the Spanish bit.
I suppose I must say something to Mr. Shipley, who doesn't seem to
understand that I'M acting as chaperon, and YOU as captain of the
party."

She cantered forward as she spoke, and Grant was obliged to join her
sister, who, mounted on a powerful roan, was mischievously exciting
a beautiful quaker-colored mustang ridden by Mrs. Ashwood, already
irritated by the unfamiliar pressure of the Eastern woman's hand upon
his bit. The thick dust which had forced the party of twenty to close up
in two solid files across the road compelled them at the first opening
in the roadside fence to take the field in a straggling gallop. Grant,
eager to escape from his own discontented self by doing something for
others, reined in beside Euphemia and the fair stranger.

"Let me take your place until Mrs. Ashwood's horse is quieted," he half
whispered to Euphemia.

"Thank you,--and I suppose it does not make any matter to Clem who
quiets mine," she said, with provoking eyes and a toss of her head
worthy of the spirited animal she was riding.

"She thinks you quite capable of managing yourself and even others,"
he replied with a playful glance at Shipley, who was riding somewhat
stiffly on the other side.

"Don't be too sure," retorted Phemie with another dangerous look; "I may
give you trouble yet."

They were approaching the first undulation of the russet plain they had
emerged upon,--an umbrageous slope that seemed suddenly to diverge
in two defiles among the shaded hills. Grant had given a few words of
practical advice to Mrs. Ashwood, and shown her how to guide her mustang
by the merest caressing touch of the rein upon its sensitive neck. He
had not been sympathetically inclined towards the fair stranger, a rich
and still youthful widow, although he could not den