A young heiress, Anne, is engaged to be married to a respectable investment broker, while rebellious David Mitchell is trying to get her to elope with him. One day while horseback riding, she sees a terrifying woman dressed in black on horseback, who begins yelling at her to stop. The woman in black gallops toward her at full speed, and the young woman flees in terror, escaping her pursuer. Just before she is to be wed, Mitchell forces himself into her home past the butler, and exposes Anne's father's weakness in the face of Mitchell's overbearing, relentless presence. Mitchell convinces Anne to elope with him. Twenty-five years later, Mitchell is a dissolute failure, who has driven the ranch Anne's late father left her into bankruptcy, and himself and Anne to alcoholism. Anne has a fight