the summer. He has been a simply impossible
man hitherto to entice into a visit. Ray and I felt like giving three
cheers."

"He seemed glad enough to be invited to visit Grey-Court," thought
Leonore.

But even without all this, Peter carried the answer to the puzzle about
with him in his own person. Leonore could not but feel the difference in
the way he treated, and talked, and looked at her, as compared to all
about her. It is true he was no more demonstrative, than with others;
his face held its quiet, passive look, and he spoke in much the usual,
quiet, even tone of voice. Yet Leonore was at first dimly conscious, and
later certain, that there was a shade of eagerness in his manner, a
tenderness in his voice, and a look in his eye, when he was with her,
that was there in the presence of no one else.

So Leonore ceased to puzzle over the problem at a given point, having
found the answer. But the solving did not bring her much apparent
pleasure.

"Oh, dear!" she remarked to herself. "I thought we were going to be such
good friends! That we could tell each other everything. And now he's
gone and spoiled it. Probably, too, he'll be bothering me later, and
then he'll be disappointed, and cross, and we shan't be good friends any
more. Oh, dear! Why do men have to behave so? Why can't they just be
friends?"

It is a question which many women have asked. The query indicates a
degree of modesty which should make the average masculine blush at his
own self-love. The best answer to the problem we can recommend to the
average woman is a careful and long study of a mirror.

As a result of this cogitation Leonore decided that she would nip
Peter's troublesomeness in the bud, that she would put up a sign,
"Trespassing forbidden;" by which he might take warning. Many women have
done the same thing to would-be lovers, and have saved the lovers much
trouble and needless expense. But Leonore, after planning out a dialogue
in her room, rather messed it when she came to put it into actual public
performance. Few girls of eighteen are cool over a love-affair. And so
it occurred thusly:

Leonore said to Peter one day, when he had dropped in for a cup of
afternoon tea after his ride with her:

"If I ask you a question, I wonder if you will tell me what you think,
without misunderstanding why I tell you something?"

"I will try."

"Well," said Leonore, "there is a very nice Englishman whom I knew in
London, who has followed m