Page:Barbour--Peggy in the rain.djvu/165

 that time that she was Lady Leona, and just wouldn't think of Gordon for a minute. Of course, I wanted to please her, but, as I pointed out to her, if Lady Leona married Sir Godfrey Devereux there wouldn't be any plot! So we had a sort of a quarrel. It didn't last more than a day, but it dampened my enthusiasm for novel writing, and I've never tried it since."

They talked about books and writers during the fish course, and when the waiter filled Gordon's glass with champagne the latter again proposed a toast, this time laughingly.

"To the author of 'Lady Leona's Secret'!"

"Never mind," she replied, pretending offense, "you may make fun of it, but it would have been a beautiful book if it had ever got finished. There were places in it that would have brought tears to your eyes, perfectly heartbreaking passages, they were. I know, for I used to cry myself when I wrote them."

"I'd like to have known you then," he said wistfully. "I want to have always known you, Peggy. I don't like to think that you have lived twenty years"

"Twenty-three, please."