"I have no liking for a horse like a bell-wether; and if this one should break my neck, I need battle with neither men nor horses again, and I shall die at the high tide of life and power; and those who think of me afterwards will only remember that they loved me--that they loved me." But the horse did not kill her, nor she it.

Day after day she stood by while it was taken from its stall, many a time dealing with it herself, because no groom dare approach; and then she would ride it forth, and in Hyde Park force it to obey her; the wondrous strength of her will, her wrist of steel, and the fierce, pitiless punishment she inflicted, actually daunting the devilish creature's courage.

She would ride from the encounter, through two lines of people who had been watching her--and some of them found themselves following after her, even to the Park gate--almost awed as they looked at her, sitting erect and splendid on the fretted, anguished beast, whose shining skin was covered with lather, whose mouth tossed blood-flecked foam, and whose great eye was so strangely like her own, but that hers glowed with the light of triumph, and his burned with the agonised protest of the vanquished.

At such times there was somewhat of fear in the glances that followed her beauty, which almost seemed to blaze--her colour was so rich, the curve of her red mouth so imperial, the poise of her head, with its loosening coils of velvet black hair, so high.
"It is good for me that I do this," she said to Anne, with a short laugh, one day.

"I was growing too soft--and I have need now for all my power.
To fight with the demon in this beast, rouses all in me that I have held in check since I became my poor lord's wife.