“I won’t be treated so!” interrupted Leonore, indignantly.

“What do you mean,” said Peter, still smiling.  “I’m reading it to you, as you asked.”

“No you are not.  You are just making up.”

“No,” said Peter.  “It’s all here.”

“Let me see it.”  Leonore shifted her seat so as to overlook Peter.

“That’s only two pages,” said Peter, holding them so that Leonore had to sit very close to him to see.  “There are eighteen more.”

Leonore looked at them.  “Was it written by a lunatic?” she asked.

“No.”  Peter looked at the end.  “It’s from Green.  Remember.  You are not to repeat it to any one.”

“Luncheon is served, Miss D’Alloi,” said a footman.

“Bother luncheon,” thought Peter.

“Please tell me what it means?” said Leonore, rising.

“I can’t do that, till I get the key and decipher it.”

“Oh!” cried Leonore, clapping her hands in delight.  “It’s a cipher.  How tremendously interesting!  We’ll go at it right after lunch and decipher it together, won’t we?”

“After the dancing lesson, you mean, don’t you?” suggested Peter.

“How did you know I was going to do it?” asked Leonore.

“You told me.”

“Never!  I didn’t say a word.”

“You looked several,” said Peter.

Leonore regarded him very seriously.  “You are not ‘Peter Simple’ a bit,” she said.  “I don’t like deep men.”  She turned and went to her room.  “I really must be careful,” she told the enviable sponge as it passed over her face, “he’s a man who needs very special treatment.  I ought to send him right back to New York.  But I do so want to know about the politics.  No.  I’ll keep friends till the campaign’s finished.  Then he’ll have to live in Albany, and that will make it all right.  Let me see.  He said the governor served three years.  That isn’t five, but perhaps he’ll have become sensible before then.”

As for Peter, he actually whistled during his ablutions, which was something he had not done for many years.  He could not quite say why, but it represented his mood better than did his earlier growl.

CHAPTER LII.

A GUARDIAN ANGEL.

Peter had as glorious an afternoon as he had had a bad morning.  First he danced a little.  Then the two sat at the big desk in the deserted library and worked together over those very complex dispatches till they had them translated.  Then they had to discuss their import.  Finally they had to draft answers and translate them into cipher.  All this with their heads very close together, and an utter forgetfulness on the part of a certain personage that snubbing rather than politics was her “plan of campaign.”  But Leonore began to feel that she was a political power herself, and so forgot her other schemes.  When they had the answering dispatches fairly transcribed, she looked up at Peter and said: