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. No woman of your age and beauty can defy public opinion alone. The world--and scandal spreads like a plague; San Francisco is only forty miles from Rosewater--the world can hurt you in a thousand ways, ruin your life. I really am only too willing to protect you, and I hope that you will marry me. I am sure we should get along--after a bit." "That was better. But I will not be driven into matrimony by gossip, or even scandal. That is no part of my scheme of life. And I know Rosewater better than you do. Mrs. Leslie, Anabel, Mrs. Colton, many of the most powerful, would never believe a word against me." "Not at first. But malicious tongues will wear the gloss from the best-befriended reputation in time. The kindest natures are conventional; and susceptible to all that take, or seem to take, a place in the ranks of established facts." "I won't do it," said Isabel, stubbornly; and as she turned her profile to him he almost swore aloud. "I shall conquer, or prove the whole modern game of woman a sham, a fool's paradise. I told you that I had set myself to drag strength out of the unknown forces. Well, I propose to use it now. And in your behalf as much as mine." "I can take care of myself.... I even think I could face the prospect of becoming your husband with a reasonable amount of equanimity." She was looking straight at him again, her face deeply flushed, her eyes shining. "It never occurred to me before, but I believe that if you would permit yourself to develop, you might become the most fascinating woman in the world. And if you did, I swear that you should be happy."