“I hope you are preparing a kind fate for me,” she said.

He laughed a little.  “What would you call a kind fate?”

Her dark eyes flashed.  She looked for a moment scornful.  “Not the usual woman’s Utopia,” she said.  “I have been through that and come out on the other side.”

“I can hardly believe it,” protested Teddy.

“Don’t you know I am a cynic?” she said, with a little reckless laugh.

A second wild shout from the spectators on all sides of them swept their conversation away.  On the further side of the ground Hone, with steady wrist and faultless aim, had just sent the ball whizzing between the posts.

It was the end of the match, and Hone was once more the hero of the hour.

“Really, I sometimes think the gods are too kind to Major Hone,” smiled Mrs. Chester, the colonel’s wife, and Mrs. Perceval’s hostess.  “It can’t be good for him to be always on the winning side.”

Hone was trotting quietly down the field, laughing all over his handsome, sunburnt face at the cheers that greeted him.  He dismounted close to Mrs. Perceval, and was instantly seized by Duncombe and thumped upon the back with all the force of his friend’s goodwill.

“Pat, old fellow, you’re the finest sportsman in the Indian Empire.  Those chaps haven’t been beaten for years.”

Hone laughed easily and swung himself free.  “They’ve got some knowing little brutes of ponies, by the powers,” he said.  “They slip about like minnows.  The Ace of Trumps was furious.  Did you hear him squeal?”

He turned with the words to his own pony and kissed the velvet nose that was rubbing against his arm.

“And a shame it is to make him carry a lively five tons,” he murmured in his caressing Irish brogue.

For Hone was a giant as well as a hero and he carried his inches, as he bore his honours, like a man.

Raising his head, he encountered Mrs. Perceval’s direct look.  She bowed to him with that regal air of hers that for all its graciousness yet managed to impart a sense of remoteness to the man she thus honoured.

“I have been admiring your luck, Major Hone,” she said.  “I am told you are always lucky.”

He smiled courteously.

“Sure, Mrs. Perceval, you can hardly expect me to plead guilty to that.”

“Anyway, you deserved your luck, Pat,” declared Duncombe.  “You played superbly.”

“Major Hone excels in all games, I believe,” said Mrs. Perceval.  “He seems to possess the secret of success.”

She spoke with obvious indifference; yet an odd look flashed across Hone’s brown face at the words.  He almost winced.

But he was quick to reply.  “The secret of success,” he said, “is to know how to make the best of a beating.”

He was still smiling as he spoke.  He met Mrs. Perceval’s eyes with baffling good-humour.

“You speak from experience, of course?” she said.  “You have proved it?”