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."