I might feel a little staggered by this easy salutation. It was rather like a small masked battery opening upon one when marching gaily up to an attack; but I rallied my forces at once, and replied, "As well as if all the coronets that ever were lined with ermine had rested beside me on the pillow. Democracy is not a catching disease, I should imagine, from all I have seen of it. But may I ask how _you_ slept? I trust without any painful visions of slaughtered swains and disconsolate lovers, or any twinges of remorse for all the woes you have and will inflict upon mankind." "None, in truth," she answered at once. "Do you know I once killed a rattlesnake?--yes, with my own hand; and when I saw the shining reptile lie dead before me, I remembered he had given honourable warning before he sprang, and then I might feel a little regret that I had struck him so hastily with the butt of my riding-whip. But man is a very different sort of reptile: he gives no warning, and is far more venomous." A strange sort of painful feeling was produced in my mind by her words. I asked myself, "Can this young girl, apparently not twenty, have already tasted of that bitter cup which man so often holds to woman's lip?" The shadow of the thought must have crossed my face, for I was roused from my half-reverie by a clear, gay laugh. "Now I will show you," she said, "how women can divine. I am no love-lorn maiden, pining for some faithless swain--no man-hater from personal experience of man's unworthiness. I never saw the man yet, and never shall, who could raise my pulse one beat to hear his coming or his going step. But let me do justice to both sides. No man ever said to me in a sweet maudlin tone, 'Bessy, will you marry me?' nor even, to my face, declared I was the most charming of my sex, or anything of that kind. But I judge men from what I have seen of their conduct towards others; and I believe them to be the most thoroughly selfish class of beings--at least as far as women are concerned--that God ever created." "And when it becomes your case to listen and have sweet words spoken," I replied, "you will think you and the speaker are two bright exceptions." She coloured a little, and looked almost angry, saying, "Never! I will never give any one the opportunity; for I go very much with the old saying, 'no _gentleman_ was ever refused by a _lady_.' I mean, no man who is really a gentleman would propose to a lady who had not given him such encouragement as would preclude her, if really a lady, from refusing him if he did propose." "Then you would have a lady," I said, "give a man encouragement before she knows whether he really loves her or not. Or you would have her advance step by step with him, like two armies in battle-array, watching each other's movements, and each taking care that the other did not get the slightest advantage; sure to get upon some slippery ground before they have done, my dear young lady!"