What was she going to say next?  But he took a cigar and lit it, and again she filled up his glass, which he had not emptied; and they set to talking about the Royal Academy of Music, while she nibbled Lychee nuts, and her brother Jim subsided into a French novel.  Miss Burgoyne was a sharp and shrewd observer; she had had a sufficiently varied career, and had come through some amusing experiences.  She talked well, but on this evening, or morning, rather, always on the good-natured side; if she described the foibles of any one with whom she had come in contact, it was with a laugh.  Lionel was inclined to forget that outer world of thick, cold fog, so warm and pleasant was the bright and pretty room, so easily the time seemed to pass.

However, he had to tear himself away in the end.  She insisted on his having a muffler of Jim’s to wrap round his throat; both she and her brother went down-stairs to see him out; and then, with a hasty good-bye, he plunged into the dark.  He had some difficulty in crossing to the top of Park Lane, for there were wagons come in from the country waiting for the daylight to give them some chance of moving on; but eventually he found himself in the well-known thoroughfare, and thereafter had not much trouble in getting down to his rooms in Piccadilly.  This time he went to bed without sitting up in front of the fire in aimless reverie.

This was not the last he was to hear of that adventure.  Two days afterwards the foreshadowed paragraph appeared in an evening paper; and from thence it was copied into all the weekly periodicals that deal more or less directly with theatrical affairs.  It was headed “’The Squire’s Daughter’ in Wednesday Night’s Fog,” and gave a minute and somewhat highly colored account of Miss Burgoyne’s experiences on the night in question; while the fact of her having been escorted by Mr. Lionel Moore was pointed to as another instance of the way in which professional people were always ready to help one another.  That this account emanated in the first place from Miss Burgoyne herself, there could be no doubt whatever; for there were certain incidents—­as, for example, the cab wheels getting up on the pavement and the near upsetting of the vehicle—­which were only known to herself and her companion; but Lionel did not in his own mind accuse her of having directly instigated its publication.  He thought it was more likely one of the advertising tricks of Mr. Lehmann, who was always trying to keep the chief members of his company well before the public.  It was the first time, certainly, that he, Lionel, had had his name coupled (unprofessionally) with that of Miss Burgoyne in the columns of a newspaper; but was that of any consequence?  People might think what they liked.  He had grown a little reckless and careless of late.

[Illustration:  “And again she filled up his glass, which he had not emptied.”]