ride.

He had swung off his own horse a few moments before; thrown the bridle
to a waiting groom, and made his way round to her stirrup. Then he had
laid his hand upon Silverheels' mane, and looking up into his wife's
glowing, handsome face, he had said: "May I come to your room for a
talk, Helen? I have something very important to tell you."

Helen had smiled down upon him.

"I thought my cavalier was miles away from his horse and his wife,
during most of the ride. But, if he proposes taking me on the same
distant journey, he shall be forgiven. Also, I have something to tell
_you_, Ronnie, and I see the turret clock gives us an hour before
luncheon. I must scribble out a message for the village; then I will
come to you at once, without stopping to change."

She laid her hand on his shoulder, and dropped lightly to the ground.
Then, telling the groom to wait, she passed into the hall.

Ronald left her standing at the table, walked into the sitting-room
alone, and suddenly realised that when you have thought of a thing
continuously, day and night, during the best part of a week, and kept it
to yourself, it is not easy to begin explaining it to another
person--even though that other person be your always kind, always
understanding, altogether perfect wife!

He had forgotten to leave his hat and gloves in the hall. He now tossed
them into a chair--Helen's own particular chair it so happened--but kept
his riding-crop in his hand, and thwacked his leather gaiters with it,
as he stood in the bay window.

It was such a perfect spring morning! The sun shone in through the
old-fashioned lattice panes.

Some silly old person of a bygone century had scratched with a diamond
on one of these a rough cross, and beneath it the motto: _In hoc vince_.

Ronald had inveighed against this. If Helen's old ancestor, having
nothing better to do, had wanted to write down a Latin motto, he should
have put it in his pocket-book, or, better still, on the even more
transitory pages of the blotter, instead of scribbling on the beautiful
diamond panes of the old Grange windows. But Helen had laughed and said:
"I should think he lived before the time of blotters, dear! No doubt the
morning sun was shining on the glass, Ronnie, as he stood at the
window. It was of the cross gleaming in the sunlight, that he wrote: _In
this conquer_. If we could but remember it, the path of self-sacrifice
and clear shining is always the way to victory."

He