ietly, "if--if he kills me."

"But why--why--what on earth is the use of taking so great a risk?" I
demanded.

A humorous expression shot into her face, and I saw her full, red lips
grow tremulous with laughter.

"That," she answered, after a moment, "is my ambition. All of us have an
ambition, you know, women as well as men."

"An ambition?" I repeated, and looked in mystification at the portrait
above the spinet.

"It sounds strange to you," she went on, "but why shouldn't I have one?
I was a very promising horsewoman before my marriage, and my ambition
now is to--to go after Bonny. Only Bonny says I can't," she added
regretfully, "because of my hands."

"They are too small?"

"Too small and too light. They can't hold things."

"Well, they've managed to hold one at any rate," I responded gaily,
though I added seriously the minute afterward, "If you'll let me sell
that horse, darling, I'll give you anything on God's earth that you
want."

"But suppose I don't want anything on God's earth except that horse?"

"There's no sense in that," I blurted out, in bewilderment. "What in
thunder is there about the brute that has so taken your fancy?"

Her hand fell from the curtain, and plucking a single blossom of sweet
alyssum, she came back to the hearth holding it to her lips.

"He has taken my fancy," she replied, "because he is exciting--and I am
craving excitement."

"But you never used to want excitement."

"People change, all the poets and philosophers tell us. I've wanted it
very badly indeed for the last six or eight months."

"Just since we've recovered our money?"

"Well, one can't have excitement without money, can one? It costs a good
deal. Beauchamp sold for sixteen hundred dollars."

"He'd sell for sixteen to-morrow if I had my way."

"But you haven't. He's the only excitement I have and I mean to keep
him. I shall go out again with the hounds on Saturday."

"If you do, you'll make me miserable, Sally. I shan't be able to do a
stroke of work."

"Then you'll be very foolish, Ben," she responded, and when I would have
still pressed the point, she ran out of the room with the remark that
she must have a hot bath before dinner. "If I don't I'll be too stiff to
mount," she called back defiantly as she went up the staircase.

All night I worried over the supremacy of Beauchamp, but on the morrow
she was kept in bed by the results of her fall, and before she was up
again, George had spirited th