dinner, with sparkling eyes.

"At about five this afternoon. I have found a saddle that I can borrow
in case yours does not come till the late train."

"Oh, I'm so glad that I've lost my appetite! You can't know how much
a horse means to me. It was after I began to ride that I grew strong
enough to hope."

"Why, Madge, were you so discouraged as that?" he asked, feelingly.

"I had reason to be discouraged," she replied, in a low tone. Then she
threw back her head, proudly. "You men little know," she continued,
half defiantly. "You think weakness one of our prerogatives, and like
us almost the better for it. We are meekly to accept our fate, and
from soft couches lift our languid eyes in pious resignation. I won't
do it; and when a powerful horse is beneath me, carrying me like the
wind, I feel that his strength is mine, and that I need not succumb to
feminine imbecility or helplessness in any form."

"Brava, Madge!" cried Henry Muir.

"You were born a knight," added Graydon, "and have already made more
and better conquests than many celebrated in prose and poetry."

"Oh, no," cried Madge, lifting her eyebrows in comic distress. "I was
born a woman to my finger-tips, and never could conquer even myself. I
have an awful temper. Graydon, you have already found that out."

"I have found that I had better accept just what you please to be,
and fully admit your right to be just what you please," he answered,
ruefully.

"What a lovely and reasonable frame of mind!" Mrs. Muir remarked.
"Truly, Miss Wildmere is to be congratulated. You have only to stick
to such a disposition, and peace will last longer than the moon."

"Oh, Miss Wildmere will prove a rose without a thorn," Madge added,
laughing, while under Mr. Muir's eye her face paled perceptibly.
"There will never be anything problematical in her single-minded
devotion. She has been well and discreetly brought up, and finished
by the best society, while poor me!--I had to fly in the face of fate
like a virago, and scramble up the best I could in Western wilds. Oh,
well, Graydon, don't be alarmed. I'll be a good fellow if you'll take
me out riding occasionally."

He began to laugh, and she continued: "I saw you frown when I began
my wicked speech. We'll tick off tabooed subjects, and make an _index
expurgatorius_, and then we'll get on famously."

"No need of that," he said. "As far as _I_ am concerned, please
consider _me_ fair game."

"Consider you fair gam