er
all. How glad I am!"

He looked at her dumbly, and waited.

He felt like the prodigal, who had planned to suggest as his only
possible desert, a place among the hired servants, but was so lifted
into realisation of sonship by the father's welcome, that perforce he
left that sentence unspoken.

So Ronnie looked at her dumbly, reading the utter love for him in her
eyes.

Back came the words of his hymn, replete with fresh meaning.

"O come, all ye faithful,
Joyful and triumphant!"

They were such faithful eyes--Helen's; and now they seemed filled with
triumphant joy.

"Ronnie," she said, "do you remember how I wrote to you at Leipzig, that
this Christmas we would have a Christmas-tree? Did not you wonder,
darling, why I said that?"

"Yes," answered Ronnie. "I thought of it this evening when I saw a
Christmas-tree at the lodge. I had meant to ask you the night I reached
home, but I did not remember then."

"Ah, if you had," she said, "if you only had!"

"Well?" he questioned. "Tell me now."

"Ronnie, do you remember that in that letter I said I had something to
tell you, and that I enclosed a note, written some weeks before,
telling you this thing?"

"Yes, dear," said Ronnie. "But you forgot to enclose the note. It was
not there. I tore the envelope right open; I hunted high and low. Then
we concluded you had after all considered it unimportant."

"It was all-important, Ronnie; and it _was_ there."

"It was--_where_?" asked Ronnie.

"Under Aubrey's foot.... Oh, hush, darling, hush! We must not say hard
things of a man who has confessed, and who is bitterly repentant. I
can't tell you the whole story now; you shall hear every detail later;
but he saw it fall from the letter, as you opened it. He was tempted,
first, to cover it with his foot; then, to put it in his pocket; and,
after he had read it, he wrote to me implying that you had told him the
news it contained; so, when you arrived home, how could I possibly
imagine that you did not know it?"

"Did not know _what?_" asked Ronnie.

She drew a folded paper from her pocket.

"My darling, this will tell you best. It is the note intended to reach
you at Leipzig; it is the note which, until this afternoon, I had all
along believed you to have received."

She put her note into his hand.

"I hope you will be able to read it by this light, Ronnie. I was very
weak when I wrote it. I could only use pencil."

Ronnie unfolded it gravely.

She knel