Here Joan intervened disdainfully.

“But that’s not Browning!”

Lady Splay looked perplexed.

“Are you sure, Joan?”

Joan tossed her head.

“Of course, it’s Browning all right,” she explained, “but it’s not Browning if you understand me.”

The explanation left that company mystified.  Harold Jupp shook his head mournfully at Joan, and tapped his forehead.

“Excessive study, Joan, has turned that little head.  The moment I saw you in sandals I said to myself, ‘Joan couldn’t take the hill.’”

Joan wrinkled her nose, and made a grimace at him.  What rejoinder she would have made no one was to know.  For Mr. Albany Todd finding himself unduly neglected burst into the conversation with a complete irrelevance.

“I am so happy.  I shot a stag last autumn.”

Both Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp turned to the great conversationalist with real interest.

“How many stone?” asked Dennis.

“I used a rifle,” replied Mr. Albany Todd coldly.  He did not like to be made fun of; and suddenly a ripple of clear laughter broke deliciously from Joan.

Lady Splay looked agitatedly around for succour.  Oh, what a mistake she had made in bringing Mr. Albany Todd into the midst of these ribald young people.  And after all—­she had to admit it ruefully, he was a bit of a Plater.  Dennis Brown, however, hurried to the rescue.  He came across the room to Joan, and sat down at her side.

“I haven’t had a word with you, Joan.”

“No,” she answered.

“And how’s the little book going on?  Do tell me!  I won’t laugh, upon my word.”

Joan herself tried not to.  “Oh, pig, pig!” she exclaimed, but she got no further in her anathema for Miranda drew up a stool, and sat in admiration before her.

“Yes, do tell us,” she pleaded.  “It’s all so wonderful.”

Miranda, however, was never to hear.  Mr. Albany Todd leaned forward with an upraised forefinger, and a smile of keen discernment.

“You are writing a book, Miss Whitworth,” he said, as if he had discovered the truth by his own intuition, and expected her to deny the impeachment.  “Ah, but you are!  And I see that you can write one.”

“Now, how?” asked Harold Jupp.

Mr. Albany Todd waved the question aside.  “The moment I entered the hall, and saw Miss Whitworth, I said to myself, ‘There’s a book there!’ Yes, I said that.  I knew it!  I know women.”

Mr. Albany Todd closed his eyelids, and peeped out through the narrowest possible slits in the cunningest fashion.  “Some experience you know.  I am the last man to boast of it.  A certain almost feminine sensibility—­and there you have my secret.  I read the character of women in their eyebrows.  A woman’s eyebrows.  Oh, how loud they speak!  I looked at Miss Whitworth’s eyebrows, and I exclaimed, ’There is a book there—­and I will read it!’”