Tom gazed at her in confusion and surprise.

“You seem to be fond, too, of dangerous exercise,” she observed.

“Do you mean to say you remembered me from that?” he exclaimed.  “Oh, you know Austen Vane, don’t you?”

“Does Mr. Vane acknowledge the acquaintance?” Victoria inquired.

“It’s funny, but you remind me of Austen,” said Tom, grinning; “you seem to have the same queer way of saying things that he has.”  Here he was conscious of another fit of embarrassment.  “I hope you don’t mind what I say, Miss Flint.”

“Not at all,” said Victoria.  She turned, and looked across the track.

“I suppose they are having a lot of trouble in catching my horse,” she remarked.

“They’ll get him,” Tom assured her, “one of those men is my manager.  He always gets what he starts out for.  What were we talking about?  Oh, Austen Vane.  You see, I’ve known him ever since I was a shaver, and I think the world of him.  If he asked me to go to South America and get him a zebra to-morrow, I believe I’d do it.”

“That is real devotion,” said Victoria.  The more she saw of young Tom, the better she liked him, although his conversation was apt to be slightly embarrassing.

“We’ve been through a lot of rows together,” Tom continued, warming to his subject, “in school and college.  You see, Austen’s the kind of man who doesn’t care what anybody thinks, if he takes it into his head to do a thing.  It was a great piece of luck for me that he shot that fellow out West, or he wouldn’t be here now.  You heard about that, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Victoria, “I believe I did.”

“And yet,” said Tom, “although I’m as good a friend as he has, I never quite got under his skin.  There’s some things I wouldn’t talk to him about.  I’ve learned that.  I never told him, for instance, that I saw him out in a sleigh with you at the capital.”

“Oh,” said Victoria; and she added, “Is he ashamed of it?”

“It’s not that,” replied Tom, hastily, “but I guess if he’d wanted me to know about it, he’d have told me.”

Victoria had begun to realize that, in the few minutes which had elapsed since she had found herself on the roadside, gazing up into young Tom’s eyes, she had somehow become quite intimate with him.

“I fancy he would have told you all there was to tell about it—­if the matter had occurred to him again,” she said, with the air of finally dismissing a subject already too prolonged.  But Tom knew nothing of the shades and conventions of the art of conversation.

“He’s never told me he knew you at all!” he exclaimed, staring at Victoria.  Apparently some of the aspects of this now significant omission on Austen’s part were beginning to dawn on Tom.

“It wasn’t worth mentioning,” said Victoria, briefly, seeking for a pretext to change the subject.

“I don’t believe that,” said Tom, “you can’t expect me to sit here and look at you and believe that.  How long has he known you?”