“Yes.  These favors are.  Though I know you’ll say ‘yes.’”

“Well?”

“First.  I want you always to keep your rooms just as they are?”

“Dear-heart, after our six weeks’ trip, we must be in Albany for three years, and when we come back to New York, we’ll have a house of course.”

“Yes.  But I want you to keep the rooms just as they are, because I love them.  I don’t think I shall ever feel the same for any other place.  It will be very convenient to have them whenever, we want to run down from Albany.  And of course you must keep up with the ward.”

“But you don’t suppose, after we are back in New-York, that I’ll stay down there, with you uptown?”

“Oh, no!  Of course not.  Peter!  How absurd you are!  But I shall go down very often.  Sometimes we’ll give little dinners to real friends.  And sometimes, when we want to get away from people, we’ll dine by ourselves and spend the night there.  Then whenever you want to be at the saloons or primaries we’ll dine together there and I’ll wait for you.  And then I think I’ll go down sometimes, when I’m shopping, and lunch with you.  I’ll promise not to bother you.  You shall go back to your work, and I’ll amuse myself with your flowers, and books, till you are ready to go uptown.  Then we’ll ride together.”

“Lispenard frightened me the other day, but you frighten me worse.”

“How?”

“He said you would be a much lovelier woman at thirty than you are now.”

“And that frightened you?” laughed Leonore.

“Terribly.  If you are that I shall have to give up law and politics entirely, so as to see enough of you.”

“But what has that to do with my lunching with you?”

“Do you think I could work at law with you in the next room?”

“Don’t you want me?  I thought it was such a nice plan.”

“It is.  If your other favor is like that I shan’t know what to say.  I shall merely long for you to ask favors.”

“This is very different.  Will you try to understand me?”

“I shan’t misunderstand you, at all events.”  Which was a crazy speech for any man to make any woman.

“Then, dear, I want to speak of that terrible time—­only for a moment, dear.  You mustn’t think I don’t believe what you said.  I do!  I do!  Every word of it, and to prove it to you I shall never speak of it again.  But when I’ve shown you that I trust you entirely, some stormy evening, when we’ve had the nicest little dinner together at your rooms, and I’ve given you some coffee, and bitten your cigar for you, I shall put you down before the fire, and sit down in your lap, as I am doing now, and put my arms about your neck so, and put my cheek so.  And then I want you, without my asking to tell me why you told mamma that lie, and all about it.”

“Dear-heart,” said Peter, “I cannot tell.  I promised.”

“Oh, but that didn’t include your wife, dear, of course.  Besides, Peter, friends should tell each other everything.  And we are the best of friends, aren’t we?”