the forest, and Gwynne suddenly felt that he hated her
profile. During the last few weeks he had lost that sense of a constant
and secret contest of wills, perhaps because his own had proved the
stronger in the final engagement; perhaps, who knew? because she
possessed all the infernal subtlety of the Spaniard. But her profile
suggested relentless power, and he still had a secret hankering for the
old-fashioned submissive female, liberal and indulgent to the sex as he
was. He had reflected that he had met so many handsome finely developed
girls, with a sufficiency of animated brightness, but well within the
type, during the past few weeks, that it was rather odd he had not been
captured; particularly as several of the most ripping would add
materially to his fortunes. But he had come to the conclusion sometime
since, when he hardly knew, that he would prefer to remain unmarried,
and enjoy the intimate companionship of a congenial and interesting
creature like Isabel, whom he never quite understood. He cursed the
stale old conventions that interfered with his desires.

Isabel turned suddenly and smiled. "How fierce you look!" she said.
"What is the matter?"

"Everything. Some one, Mrs. Haight, I suppose, saw me riding home on
your horse at three o'clock yesterday morning, and the whole town is by
the ears. Judge Leslie undertook to break the news to me, and I told him
I had gone out to propose, and then ridden about the country to calm my
raging fires. I feel that I owe it to you to propose in good earnest,
and such as I am you are welcome to me."

"I never heard such a graceful proposal. I wouldn't marry you if
Rosewater stood on its head."

"I was rather brutal about it, and I must honestly confess that I'm not
particularly keen on marrying you, but I think we'll have to marry, or
be deuced uncomfortable--"

"Oh, nothing to what we should be if married. And Rosewater to me is a
mere market for chickens and eggs. The only punishment they could
inflict on me would be to burn down the hatcheries. I hate to bother
with incubators."

Gwynne stood up and knocked the ashes out of his pipe. "We must be
serious," he said. "They are really malignant about it. I have felt it
in the air for some time. Every time I pass that she-devil, Mrs. Haight,
on Main Street, her eyes contract with a sort of malicious warning.
'Just you wait!' is the way she would phrase it. And I always _feel_ her
at her window when I ride home late. N