“I shan’t think badly of you, Peter,” said Leonore, in the nicest tone.

“Thank you,” said Peter.  “And if you see things said of me that trouble you, will you ask me about them?”

“Yes.  But I thought you wouldn’t talk politics?”

“I will talk with you, because, you know, friends must tell each other everything.”

When Leonore had settled back in the carriage for the long drive, she cogitated:  “Mr. Le Grand said that he and Miss De Voe, and Mr. Ogden had all tried to get Peter to talk about politics, but that he never would.  Yet, he’s known them for years, and is great friends with them.  It’s very puzzling!”

Probably Leonore was thinking of American politics.

CHAPTER XLVII.

THE BLUE-PETER.

Leonore’s puzzle went on increasing in complexity, but there is a limit to all intricacy, and after a time Leonore began to get an inkling of the secret.  She first noticed that Peter seemed to spend an undue amount of time with her.  He not merely turned up in the Park daily, but they were constantly meeting elsewhere.  Leonore went to a gallery.  There was Peter!  She went to a concert.  Ditto, Peter!  She visited the flower-show.  So did Peter!  She came out of church.  Behold Peter!  In each case with nothing better to do than to see her home.  At first Leonore merely thought these meetings were coincidences, but their frequency soon ended this theory, and then Leonore noticed that Peter had a habit of questioning her about her plans beforehand, and of evidently shaping his accordingly.

Nor was this all.  Peter seemed to be constantly trying to get her to spend time with him.  Though the real summer was fast coming, he had an other dinner.  He had a box at the theatre.  He borrowed a drag from Mr. Pell, and took them all up for a lunch at Mrs. Costell’s in Westchester.  Then nothing would do but to have another drive, ending in a dinner at the Country Club.

Flowers, too, seemed as frequent as their meetings.  Peter had always smiled inwardly at bribing a girl’s love with flowers and bon-bons, but he had now discovered that flowers are just the thing to send a girl, if you love her, and that there is no bribing about it.  So none could be too beautiful and costly for his purse.  Then Leonore wanted a dog—­a mastiff.  The legal practice of the great firm and the politics of the city nearly stopped till the finest of its kind had been obtained for her.

Another incriminating fact came to her through Dorothy.

“I had a great surprise to-day,” she told Leonore.  “One that fills me with delight, and that will please you.”

“What is that?”

“Peter asked me at dinner, if we weren’t to have Anneke’s house at Newport for the summer, and when I said ‘yes,’ he told me that if I would save a room for him, he would come down Friday nights and stay over Sunday, right through the summer.  He has been a simply impossible man hitherto to entice into a visit.  Ray and I felt like giving three cheers.”