“You’ll know me.”

“But you don’t go into society.”

“Oh, yes, I do.  Sometimes, that is.  I shall probably go more next winter.  I’ve shut myself up too much.”  This was a discovery of Peter’s made in the last ten seconds.

“How nice that will be!  And will you promise to give me a great deal of attention?”

“You’ll probably want very little.  I don’t dance.”  Peter suddenly became conscious that Mr. Weller was right.

“But you can learn.  Please.  I do so love valsing.”

Peter almost reeled again at the thought of waltzing with Leonore.  Was it possible life had such richness in it?  Then he said with a bitter note in his voice very unusual to him: 

“I’m afraid I’m too old to learn.”

“Not a bit,” said Leonore.  “You don’t look any older than lots of men I’ve seen valsing.  Young men I mean.  And I’ve seen men seventy years old dancing in Europe.”

Whether Peter could have kept his seat much longer is to be questioned.  But fortunately for him, the horses here came to a stop in front of a stable.

“Why,” said Leonore, “here we are already!  What a short ride it has been.”

Peter thought so too, and groaned over the end of it.  But then he suddenly remembered that Leonore was to be lifted from her horse.  He became cold with the thought that she might jump before he could get to her, and he was off his horse and by her side with the quickness of a military training.  He put his hands up, and for a moment had—­well, Peter could usually express himself but he could not put that moment into words.  And it was not merely that Leonore had been in his arms for a moment, but that he had got a good look up into her eyes.

“I wish you would take my horse round to the Riding Club,” he told the groom.  “I wish to see Miss D’Alloi home.”

“Thank you very much, but my maid is here in the brougham, so I need not trouble you.  Good-bye, and thank you.  Oh, thank you so much!” She stood very close to Peter, and looked up into his eyes with her own.  “There’s no one I would rather have had save me.”

She stepped into the brougham, and Peter closed the door.  He mounted his horse again, and straightening himself up, rode away.

“Hi thought,” remarked the groom to the stableman, “that ’e didn’t know ’ow to sit ’is ’orse, but ’e’s all right, arter all.  ’E rides like ha ’orse guards capting, w’en ’e don’t ’ave a girl to bother ’im.”

Would that girl bother him?

CHAPTER XXXVII.

“FRIENDS.”

At first blush, judging from Peter’s behavior, the girl was not going to bother him.  Peter left his horse at the stable, and taking a hansom, went to his club.  There he spent a calm half hour over the evening papers.  His dinner was eaten with equal coolness.  Not till he had reached his study did he vary his ordinary daily routine.  Then, instead of working or reading, he rolled a comfortable chair up to the fire, put on a fresh log or two, opened a new box of Bock’s, and lighting one, settled back in the chair.  How many hours he sat and how many cigars he smoked are not recorded, lest the statement should make people skeptical of the narrative.