The eagle feather came even with his ear when she stood beside him, slender and strong, health in her eyes, her womanhood ripening in her lips. Not as tall as Vesta, not as full of figure, he began in mental measurement, burning with self-reproof when he caught himself at it. Why should he always be drawing comparisons between her and Vesta, to her disadvantage in all things? It was unwarranted, it was absurd! They sat on the hillside, their horses nipping each other in introductory preliminaries, then settling down to immediate friendship. They were far beyond sight of the fence. Lambert hoped, with an uneasy return of that feeling of disloyalty and guilt, that Vesta would not come riding up that way and find the open strands of wire. This thought passed away and troubled him no more as they sat talking of the strange way of their "meeting on the run," as she said. "There isn't a horse in a thousand that could have caught up with me that day." "Not one in thousands," he amended, with due gratitude to Whetstone. "I expected you'd be riding him today, Duke." "He backed into a fire," said he uneasily, "and burned off most of his tail. He's no sight for a lady in his present shape." She laughed, looking at him shrewdly, as if she believed it to be a joke to cover something that he didn't want her to know. "But you promised to give him to me, Duke, when he rested up a little." "I will," he declared earnestly, getting hold of her hand where it lay in the grass between them. "I'll give you anything I've got, Grace, from the breath in my body to the blood in my heart!" She bent her head, her face rosy with her mounting blood. "Would you, Duke?" said she, so softly that it was not much more than the flutter of the wings of words. He leaned a little nearer, his heart climbing, as if it meant to smother him and cut him short in that crowning moment of his dream. "I'd have gone to the end of the world to find you, Grace," he said, his voice shaking as if he had a chill, his hands cold, his face hot, a tingling in his body, a sound in his ears like bells. "I want to tell you how----" "Wait, Duke--I want to hear it all--but wait a minute. There's something I want to ask you to do for me. Will you do me a favor, Duke, a simple favor, but one that means the world and all to me?" "Try me," said he, with boundless confidence. "It's more than giving me your horse, Duke; a whole lot more than that, but it'll not hurt you--you can do it, if you will." "I know you wouldn't ask me to do anything that would reflect on my honesty or honor," he said, beginning to do a little thinking as his nervous chill passed. "A man doesn't--when a man _cares_--" She stopped, looking away, a little constriction in her throat. "What is it, Grace?" pressing her hand encouragingly, master of the situation now, as he believed.