"Yes?" she gazed at him with an air of thorough mystification.
"He intensely enjoys a joke," repeated Lancaster. "I want you to promise me now, upon your honor, that you will not tell him how unmercifully you quizzed me awhile ago. He would never have done chaffing me if he knew, and he would tell the whole regiment once we landed in England."
"Would they tease you much?" inquired Leonora, highly interested.
"Unbearably," he replied.
"They shall not know, then," she answered, promptly. "I will not tell your friend about it."
"Nor any one?" he entreated.
"Certainly not," she answered, soothingly, and involuntarily he caught her hand and pressed it a moment in his own, not displeased to see that she blushed as she drew it hastily away.
He went away, and when he looked at his watch outside the door he was honestly surprised.
"Two hours! I really do not know how the time went," he said to himself.
When he went back to his hotel he found De Vere in a state of surprise, too.