pocket. That card was not going to be wasted.

So presently the glasses were filled up, even Peter saying, "You may
give me a glass," and Watts was on his feet. He gave "our friends" a
pleasant welcome, and after apologizing for their absence, said that at
least, "like the little wife in the children's play, 'We too have not
been idle,' for we bring you a new friend and introduce her to you
to-night."

Then Peter rose, and told the host: "Your friends have been grieved at
your long withdrawal from them, as the happy faces and welcome we tender
you this evening, show. We feared that the fascination of European art,
with its beauty and ease and finish, had come to over-weigh the love of
American nature, despite its life and strength and freshness; that we
had lost you for all time. But to-night we can hardly regret even this
long interlude, if to that circumstance we owe the happiest and most
charming combination of American nature and European art--Miss D'Alloi."

Then there was applause, and a drinking of Miss D'Alloi's health, and
the ladies passed out of the room--to enjoy themselves, be it
understood, leaving the men in the gloomy, quarrelsome frame of mind it
always does.

Peter apparently became much abstracted over his cigar, but the
abstraction was not perhaps very deep, for he was on his feet the moment
Watts rose, and was the first to cross the hall into the drawing-room.
He took a quick glance round the room, and then crossed to a sofa.
Dorothy and--and some one else were sitting on it.

"Speaking of angels," said Dorothy.

"I wasn't speaking of you," said Peter. "Only thinking."

"There," said Leonore. "Now if Mrs. Grinnell had only heard that."

Peter looked a question, so Leonore continued:

"We were talking about you. I don't understand you. You are so different
from what I had been told to think you. Every one said you were very
silent and very uncomplimentary, and never joked, but you are not a bit
as they said, and I thought you had probably changed, just as you had
about the clothes. But Mrs. Grinnell says she never heard you make a
joke or a compliment in her life, and that at the Knickerbocker they
call you 'Peter, the silent.' You are a great puzzle."

Dorothy laughed. "Here we four women--Mrs. Grinnell, and Mrs. Winthrop
and Leonore and myself--have been quarrelling over you, and each
insisting you are something different. I believe you are not a bit firm
and stable, as people say you a