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." Helen invariably stood up for her ancestors, which was annoying to a very modern young man who, not being aware of possessing any, considered ancestors unnecessary and obsolete.
But to-day the glittering letters shone out to him as an omen.
He meant to conquer, in this, as in all else.
It was curious that Helen should have chanced upon the simile of a distant journey.