A moment later her father and another man came into the hall from the street, compelling Leonore to assume a more proper attitude.

“Hello, Dot!” said Watts.  “Still up?  Vaughan and I are going to have a game of billiards.  Won’t you score for us?”

“Yes,” said Leonore.

“Bad news from New York, isn’t it?” said Vaughan, nonchalantly, as he stood back after his first play.

Leonore saw her father make a grimace at Vaughan, which Vaughan did not see.  She said, “What?”

“I missed,” said Watts.  “Your turn, Will.”

“Tell me the news before you shoot?” said Leonore.

“The collision of the strikers and the troops.”

“Was any one hurt?” asked Leonore, calmly scoring two to her father’s credit.

“Yes.  Eleven soldiers and twenty-two strikers.”

“What regiment was it?” asked Leonore.

“Colonel Stirling’s,” said Vaughan, making a brilliant masse.  “Fortunately it’s a Mick regiment, so we needn’t worry over who was killed.”

Leonore thought to herself:  “You are as bad every bit as Podds!” Aloud she said, “Did it say who were killed?”

“No.  The dispatch only said fourteen dead.”

“That was a beautiful shot,” said Leonore.  “You ought to run the game out with that position.  I think, papa, that I’ll go to bed.  I find I’m a little tired.  Good-night, Mr. Vaughan.”  Leonore went upstairs, slowly, deep in thought.  She did not ring for her maid.  On the contrary she lay down on her bed in her dinner-gown, to its everlasting detriment.  “I know he isn’t hurt,” she said, “because I should feel it.  But I wish the telegram had said.”  She hardly believed herself, apparently, for she buried her head in the pillow, and began to sob quietly.  “If I only had said good-bye,” she moaned.

Early the next morning Watts found Leonore in the hall.

“How pale my Dot is!” he exclaimed.

“I didn’t sleep well,” said Leonore.

“Aren’t you going to ride with me?”

“No.  I don’t feel like it this morning,” said Leonore.

As Watts left the hall, a servant entered it.

“I had to wait, Miss D’Alloi,” he said.  “No papers are for sale till eight o’clock.”

Leonore took the newspaper silently and went to the library.  Then she opened it and looked at the first column.  She read it hurriedly.

“I knew he wasn’t hurt,” she said, “because I would have felt it, and because he had my luck piece.”  Then she stepped out of one of the windows, called Betise to her, and putting her arms about his neck, kissed him.

When the New York papers came things were even better, for they recorded the end of the strike.  Leonore even laughed over that big, big D.  “I can’t imagine him getting so angry,” she said “He must have a temper, after all.”  She sang a little, as she fixed the flowers in the vases, and one of the songs was “Happiness.”  Nor did she snub a man who hinted at afternoon tea, as she had a poor unfortunate who suggested tennis earlier in the day.