"Yes; he has not been used enough of late. He'll be quiet before
night, for I am enjoying this so much that I should like to return in
the same way."
"I am delighted to hear you say so. My spirits begin to rise the
moment I am with you, and you are the only woman I ever knew from
whose side I could not go with the feeling, 'Well, some other time
would suit me now.'"
Her laugh rang out so suddenly and merrily that her horse sprang into
a gallop, but she checked him speedily, and thought, with an exultant
thrill, "Graydon now has surely revealed an unmistakable symptom." To
him she said:
"You amuse me immensely. You are almost as outspoken as little Harry,
and, like him, you mistake the impression of the moment for the
immutable."
"Now, that's not fair to me. I've been constant to you. Own up, Madge,
haven't I?"
With a glance and smile which she never gave to others, and rarely to
him, she said:
"I own up. I don't believe a real brother would have been half so
nice.".
"Let the past guarantee the future, then. Shake hands against all
future misunderstandings."
She was scarcely ready to shake hands on such a basis, but of course
would have complied. In the slight confusion her hand relaxed its
grasp on the curb-rein, and at the same moment a locomotive, coming
along the side of the opposite mountain, blew a shrill whistle.
Instantly her horse had the bit in his teeth, and was off at a furious
pace.
At first she did not care, but soon found, with anxiety, that he
paid no attention to her efforts to check him, and that his pace was
passing into a mad run. The gorge was growing narrower, and the lofty
mountains stood, with their rocky feet, nearer and nearer together.
She could see through the intervening trees that the road and
rail-track were becoming closely parallel, and at last realized that
her horse was unmanageable.
When the engineer of the train saw Madge's desperate riding he
surmised that her horse was not under control, and put on extra steam
in order to take the exciting cause of the animal's terror out of the
way. He thought he could easily reach the summit of the clove where
the carriage-drive crossed the track before Madge, and then pass
swiftly over the down-grade beyond; but he had not calculated on the
terrific speed of the horse; and when at last the track and roadway
were almost side by side the frantic beast, with his pale rider, was
abreast of the train. For a moment the engineer was irresolute, and
then, too late, as he feared, "slowed up."
The narrow road, with a precipitous mountain on the left, was so near
to the flying train that the passengers in an open car could almost
touch Madge, and she was to them like a strange and beautiful
apparition, with her white face and large dark eyes filled with an
unspeakable dread.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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