He glanced at the drooping figure in the arm-chair, and it flashed over him that De Vere would never be done laughing if he knew that he, Lord Lancaster, a cavalry officer, and a "swell party" altogether, had been made a target for the amusement of this lowly born girl. How dared she do it? and could he keep De Vere from finding out? he asked himself in the same breath. And just then Leonora West lifted her wet eyes to his face, and said, with a sob in her throat: "I am glad now that I didn't tell you the truth at first. If I had, I mightn't have found out, perhaps, that you thought me a bore and a nuisance, and that you didn't want me to go to Europe with you." Captain Lancaster winced. All she had said was quite true, yet he had not cared to have her know it. It is but seldom one cares to have people know one's real opinion of them. "And--and"--she went on, resentfully, "you may be quite, quite sure, after this, that I will not go with you. You will have no trouble with me. My aunt might have come after me herself, I think. I was afraid, when I got her letter saying that you would come for me, that something would go wrong. Now I know it. To think that you should call me a baby!" While she poured forth her grievances dolorously, Lancaster had been collecting his wool-gathering wits. What upon earth was he to do if she really refused to go with him? He pictured to himself old Lady Lancaster's fury. It was quite likely that, after such a contretemps, she would cut him off with a shilling. "It will never do for her to stay in this mood. She shall go to England, _nolens volens_," he resolved. "Richard" began to be "himself again." The ludicrous side of the case dawned upon him. "I have made a tremendous _faux pas_, certainly, and now I must get out of it the best way I can," he thought, grimly. Leonora's sharp little tongue had grown still now, and her face was again hidden in her hands. He went up to her and touched her black sleeve lightly. "Oh, come now," he said; "if you go on like this I shall think I made a very apposite mistake. Who but a baby would make such a declaration as yours in the face of the circumstances? Of course you are going to Europe with me!" "I am not," she cried, with a mutinous pout of the rich red lips. "Yes, you are," he replied, coolly. "You have no business to get angry with me because I made a slight mistake about your age. And after all, I remember now that it was really De Vere's mistake, and not mine." "Who is De Vere?" inquired Leonora, curiously, as she glanced up at him through her wet lashes, and showing the rims of her eyes very pink indeed from the resentful tears she had shed. "De Vere is my friend and traveling-companion," he replied. "And does he, too, consider me a bore and a nuisance?"