The boy shook his head.
"I want your promise that you'll come to me if——"
Leslie did not wait to hear any more, but breaking from him, ran swiftly up the stairs. At the first landing she turned and looked back: he was standing very straight and very quiet by the newel post, glancing up at her with intense admiration. In a flash she was back to the foot of the stairs holding out her hand to him.
"I promise, Roy," she said impulsively. "You're the best-hearted fellow going! Good-night!"
At the door of her step-mother's apartment, Leslie paused. A babel of voices came from behind the closed doors—the voices of many men and one woman. Quickly in answer to her knock and question "May I come in?" the door was thrown back, and Flomerfelt, her father's confidential man, stood framed in the doorway, bowing elaborately. In a glance, despite the haze of cigar smoke, she saw that the company consisted of her father, her father's wife, and another man. With a glad cry, she rushed over to this other man and grasped his hand.
"Colonel Morehead! The sight of you...."
In an instant, Colonel Morehead's thin lips parted in a smile. He made an old-fashioned bow and then sank back into his chair.
"You were at Amy Pallet-Searing's to-night," the girl went on, "and you never looked me up. Be good enough to explain yourself, sir!"