or. 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?"

"I saw him once or twice last summer, at Leith," said Victoria, now
wavering between laughter and exasperation. She had got herself into a
quandary indeed when she had to parry the appalling frankness of such
inquiries.

"The more you see of him, the more you'll admire him, I'll prophesy,"
said Tom. "If he'd been content to travel along the easy road, as