He did not even offer to shake hands in parting.  They went into the hallway together, and leaving the rest of the party, who were already raiding the larder for an impromptu supper, to their own devices, they passed upstairs, Miss Pierce to bathe her eyes and Peter to pack his belongings.

“Where are Helen and Stirling?” inquired Mr. Pierce when the time came to serve out the Welsh rarebit he was tending.

“They’ll be along presently,” said Watts.  “Helen forgot something, and they went back after it.”

“They will be properly punished by the leathery condition of the rarebit, if they don’t hurry.  And as we are all agreed that Stirling is somewhat lacking in romance, he will not get a corresponding pleasure from the longer stroll to reward him for that.  There, ladies and gentlemen, that is a rarebit that will melt in your mouth, and make the absent ones regret their foolishness.  As the gourmand says in ‘Richelieu,’ ‘What’s diplomacy compared to a delicious pate?’”

CHAPTER VII.

Facing the world.

Army surgeons recognize three types of wounded.  One type so nervous, that it drops the moment it is struck, whether the wound is disabling or not.  Another so nerveless, that it fights on, unconscious that it has been hit.  A third, who, feeling the wound, goes on fighting, sustained by its nerve.  It is over the latter sort that the surgeons shake their heads and look anxious.

Peter did his packing quietly and quickly, not pausing for a moment in the task.  Then he went downstairs, and joined the party, just finishing the supper.  He refused, it is true, to eat anything, and was quiet, but this phase was so normal in him, that it occasioned no remark.  Asked where Miss Pierce was, he explained briefly that he had left her in the hall, in order to do his packing and had not seen her since.

In a few moments the party broke up.  Peter said a good-bye to each, quite conscious of what he was doing, yet really saying more and better things than he had said in his whole visit, and quite surprising them all in the apparent ease with which he went through the duty.

“You must come and see us when you have put your shingle out in New York,” said Mr. Pierce, not quite knowing why, having previously decided that they had had enough of Peter.  “We shall be in the city early in September, and ready to see our friends.”

“Thank you,” replied Peter.  He turned and went upstairs to his room.  He ought to have spent the night pacing his floor, but he did not.  He went to bed instead Whether Peter slept, we cannot say.  He certainly lay very still, till the first ray of daylight brightened the sky.  Then he rose and dressed.  He went to the stables and explained to the groom that he would walk to the station, and merely asked that his trunk should be there in time to be checked.  Then he returned to the house and told the cook that he would breakfast on the way.  Finally he started for the station, diverging on the way, so as to take a roundabout road, that gave him a twelve-mile tramp in the time he had before the train left.