ondition, or to strive to teach her to check her
passions; and in the midst of these perilous surroundings the little
virago grew handsomer and of finer carriage every hour, as if on the rank
diet that fed her she throve and flourished.

There came a day at last when she had reached six years old, when by a
trick of chance a turn was given to the wheel of her fate.

She had not reached three when a groom first set her on a horse's back
and led her about the stable-yard, and she had so delighted in her
exalted position, and had so shouted for pleasure and clutched her
steed's rein and clucked at him, that her audience had looked on with
roars of laughter. From that time she would be put up every day, and as
time went on showed such unchildish courage and spirit that she furnished
to her servant companions a new pastime. Soon she would not be held on,
but riding astride like a boy, would sit up as straight as a man and
swear at her horse, beating him with her heels and little fists if his
pace did not suit her. She knew no fear, and would have used a whip so
readily that the men did not dare to trust her with one, and knew they
must not mount her on a steed too mettlesome. By the time she passed her
sixth birthday she could ride as well as a grown man, and was as familiar
with her father's horses as he himself, though he knew nothing of the
matter, it being always contrived that she should be out of sight when he
visited his hunters.

It so chanced that the horse he rode the oftenest was her favourite, and
many were the tempests of rage she fell into when she went to the stable
to play with the animal and did not find him in his stall, because his
master had ordered him out. At such times she would storm at the men in
the stable-yard and call them ill names for their impudence in letting
the beast go, which would cause them great merriment, as she knew nothing
of who the man was who had balked her, since she was, in truth, not so
much as conscious of her father's existence, never having seen or even
heard more of him than his name, which she in no manner connected with
herself.

"Could Sir Jeoffry himself but once see and hear her when she storms at
us and him, because he dares to ride his own beast," one of the older men
said once, in the midst of their laughter, "I swear he would burst forth
laughing and be taken with her impudent spirit, her temper is so like his
own. She is his own flesh and blood, and as ful