have been shooting for eight
months."

"Shooting!"

Joan Whitworth's eyes were turned on him in frank disappointment. "The
author of 'The Dark Tower'--shooting!"

There was more than disappointment in her voice. There was a hint of
disdain.

Hillyard did not pursue the argument.

"I knew that I had seen you before. I remember where now. You were with
Sir Chichester at the first performance of 'The Dark Tower.' I peeped
out behind the curtain of my box and saw you."

Joan's face relaxed.

"Oh, yes, I was there."

"But----" Hillyard began, and caught himself up. He had been on the
point of saying that she had a very different aspect in the stalls of
the Rubicon Theatre. But he looked her up and down and held his peace.
Yet what he did substitute left him in no better case.

"So you have not gone to the races," he said, and once more her lip
curled in disdain. She drew herself up to her full height--she was not
naturally small, but a good honest piece of English maidenhood.

"Do I look as if I were likely to go to the races?" she asked superbly.

She was dressed in a sort of shapeless flowing gown, saffron in colour,
and of a material which, to Hillyard's inexperienced eye, seemed canvas.
It spread about her on the ground, and it was high at the throat. A
broad starched white collar, like an Eton boy's, surmounted it, and a
little black tie was fastened in a bow, and scarves floated untidily
around her.

"No, upon my word you do not," cried Hillyard, nettled at last by her
haughtiness, and with such a fervour of agreement, that suddenly all her
youth rose into Joan Whitworth's face and got the better of her pose.
She laughed aloud, frankly, deliciously. And her laugh was still
rippling about the room when motor-horns hooted upon the drive.

At once the laughter vanished.

"We shall be amongst horses in a minute," she observed with a sigh. "I
can smell the stables already," and she retired to her book in the
embrasure of the window.

A joyous and noisy company burst into the room. Sir Chichester, with
larger mother-of-pearl buttons on his fawn-coloured overcoat than ever
decorated even a welshing bookmaker on Brighton Downs, led Hillyard up
to Lady Splay.

"My wife. Millie, Mr. Hillyard."

Hints of Lady Splay's passion for the last new person had prepared
Hillyard for a lady at once gushing and talkative. He was surprised to
find himself shaking hands with a pleasant, unassuming woman of distinct
goo