Turning from me, she walked slowly to the end of the room and bent over the box of sweet alyssum, which still blossomed under a canary cage on the window-sill. A cedar log was burning on the andirons, and the red light of the flames fell on the tapestried furniture, on the quaint inlaid spinet in one corner, and on the portrait above it of Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca clasping hands under a garland of roses.
"Will you promise me, dearest?" I asked again, for she did not answer.
Lifting her head from the flowers, she stood with her hand on one of the delicate curtains, and her figure, in its straight black habit, drawn very erect.
"I'll ride him," she responded quietly, "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?"