are at this minute in this room."

She turned away from him; at the same moment the pale young gentleman
said, rather breathlessly,

"Miss Burgoyne, if you would permit me to accompany you and Miss Ingram
home, I should esteem it a great honor--and--and pleasure."

She whipped round in an instant.

"Oh, thank you, Percy--Mr. Miles, I mean," she added, in pretty
confusion. "That will be so kind of you. We shall be delighted, I'm
sure--very kind of you indeed."

No more was said at the moment, for Miss Burgoyne had been called; and
Lionel, as he wended his way to the wings, could only ask himself,

"What is she up to now? She calls me Mr. Moore before her friends, and
him Percy, and she contrives to put him into the position of rescuing
two distressed damsels. Well, what does it matter? I suppose women are
like that."

But Mr. Percival Miles's accompanying those two young ladies through the
storm did matter to him, in another way, and seriously. When, the
performance being over, he got into evening dress and drove along in a
hansom to the Garden Club, he found there two or three of the young
gentlemen who were in the habit of lounging about the supper-room,
glancing at illustrated papers or chewing toothpicks, until the time for
poker had arrived.

"Johnny," he said to one of them, "somehow I feel awfully down in the
mouth to-night."

"That's unusual with you, then," was the cheerful reply. "For you are
the pluckiest loser I ever saw. But I must say your luck of late has
been just something frightful."

"Well, I'm down altogether--in luck, in finances, and spirits; and I'm
going to pull myself up a peg. Come and keep me company. I'm going to
order a magnum of Perrier Jouet of '74, and I only want a glass or two;
you must help me out, or some of those other fellows."

"That's a pretty piece of extravagance!" the other exclaimed. "A
magnum--to get a couple of glasses out of it; like an otter taking a
single bite from a salmon's shoulder. Never mind, old chap; I'm in. I
hate champagne at this time of night; but I don't want you to kill
yourself."

As they sat at supper, with this big bottle before them, Lionel said,

"It will be a bad thing for me if young Miles doesn't show up to-night."

"I should have thought it would have been an excellent thing for you if
Miles had never entered this club," his companion observed.

"That's true," said Lionel, rather gloomily. "But my only chance now is
to get some of