She turned with a laugh that sounded a little reckless. "There's no pleasure in being careful, and I'm seeking pleasure," she answered. The next morning I went to New York for a couple of days, and when I returned late one afternoon, I found Sally, in her riding habit, pouring tea for Bonny Marshall and George Bolingbroke in the drawing-room. I was very tired, my mind was engrossed in business, as it had been engrossed since the day of the sale of the West Virginia and Wyanoke Railroad, and I was about to pass upstairs to my dressing-room, when George, catching sight of me, called to me to come in and exert my powers of persuasion. "I'm begging Sally to sell that horse, Beauchamp," he said. "She tried to make him take a fence this afternoon and he balked and threw her. At first we were frightened out of our wits, but she got up laughing and insisted upon mounting him again on the spot." "Of course you didn't let her," I retorted, with anger. "Let her? Great Scott! have you been married to a Bland for nearly eight years and are you still saying, 'let her'?" "I mounted and rode on with the hunt," said Sally, looking at me with shining eyes in which there was a defiant and reckless expression. "He got quite away with me, but I held on and came in at the death, though without a hat. Now my arms are so sore I shall hardly be able to do my hair." "Of course you're not to ride that horse again, Sally," I responded sternly, forgetting my dusty clothes, forgetting Bonny's dancing black eyes that never left my face while I stood there. "Of course I am, Ben," rejoined Sally, laughing, while a high colour rose to her forehead. "Of course I'm going to ride him to-morrow afternoon when I go out with Bonny." "Ah, don't, please," entreated Bonny, in evident distress; "he's really an ugly brute, you know, dear, if he is so beautiful." "I feel awfully mean about it, Ben," said George, "because, you see, I got him for her." "And you got him," I retorted, indignantly, "without knowing evidently a thing about him." "One can never know anything about a brute like that. He went like a lamb as long as I was on him, but the trouble is that Sally has too light a hand." "He'd be all right with me," remarked Bonny, stretching out her arm, in which the muscle was hard as steel. "See what a grip I have." "I'll never give up, I'll never give up," said Sally, and though she uttered the words with gaiety, the expression of defiance, of recklessness, was still in her eyes. When George and Bonny had gone, I tried in vain to shake this resolve, which had in it something of the gentle, yet unconquerable, obstinacy of Miss Matoaca. "Promise me, Sally, that you will not attempt to ride that horse again," I entreated.