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 knelt, with bowed head, beside him.  She dared not watch his face.

She heard his breath come short and fast.  He moved his knees, and let go his ’cello.

The Infant of Prague slipped unnoticed to the floor.

When he read of the birth of his little son, with a hard choking sob, Ronnie turned and gathered her to him, holding her close, yet eagerly reading the letter over her head; reading it, to its very last word.

Then, dropping the letter, he clasped her to him, with a strength and a depth of tenderness such as she had never before known in Ronnie.  And his first words were not what Helen had expected.