confidence; for the mare was docile and would follow him at a word.

"I am telling you the why-and-how of it all," he said, "because after
this week you will be teaching yourself. This week I shall come every
morning for an hour; but on Wednesday you start for Sweetwater Farm."

"And will there be nobody at the Farm to help me," she asked, a trifle
dismayed.

"The farmer--his name is Cordery--rides, after a fashion. But he knows
nothing of a side-saddle, if indeed he has ever seen one."

"Then to trot, canter, and gallop I must teach myself," she thought; for
among the close plantations of Sabines there was room for neither.
"If I experiment here, they will find me hanging like Absalom from a
bough." But aloud she said nothing of her tremors.

"Dicky sits a horse remarkably well for his age," said Sir Oliver after
a pause. "I had some thought to pack him off holidaying with you.
But the puppy has taken to the water like a spaniel. He went off to the
_Venus_ yesterday, and it seems that on board of her he struck up, there
and then, a close friendship with Harry's lieutenant, a Mr. Hanmer; and
now he can talk of nothing but rigging and running-gear. He's crazed
for a cruise and a hammock. Also it would seem that he used his time to
win the affections of Madam Harry; which argues that his true calling is
not the Navy, after all, but diplomacy."

Ruth sighed inaudibly. Dicky's companionship would have been
delightful. But she knew the child's craze, and would not claim him, to
mar his bliss--though she well knew that at a word from her he would
renounce it.

"Diplomacy?" she echoed.

"Well," said Sir Oliver, looking straight before him. "Sally--my
brother insists on calling her Sally--appears to have her head fixed
well on her shoulders: she looks--as you must not forget to look--
straight between the horse's ears. But your young bride is apt to be
the greatest prude in the world. And Dicky, you see--"

Her hand weighed on the rein and brought the mare to a halt.

"Tell me about Dicky?"

"About Dicky?" he repeated.

"About his mother, then."

"She is dead," he answered, staring at the mare's glossy shoulder and
smoothing it. His brows were bent in a frown.

"Yes . . . he told me that, in the coach, on our way from Port Nassau.
It was the first thing he told me when he awoke. We had been rolling
along the beach for hours in the dark; and I remember how, almost at the
end of the beach, it grew