Joan’s:  “That’s the twinkle.”

Luttrell’s:  “It’s pretty difficult.”

“Try it again,” said Joan.  “Oh, that’s ever so much better.”

“I shall never dare to dance it with any one else,” said Luttrell.

“I really don’t mind very much about that,” Joan responded dryly.

Millie Splay could hardly believe her ears.  Cautiously she and her party advanced on tiptoe to the balustrade and looked down.  Yes, there the pair of them were, now laughing, now in desperate earnest, practising the fox-trot to the music of the gramophone.

“Do I hold you right?” asked Harry.

“Well—­I shan’t break, you know,” Joan answered demurely, and then with a little sigh, “That’s better.”

Under her breath Stella Croyle murmured passionately, “Oh, you minx!”

As the record ran out a storm of applause burst from the gallery.

“Oh, Joan, Joan,” cried Harold Jupp, shaking his head reproachfully.  “There’s the poet kicked right across the room.”

“Where?” asked Harry Luttrell, looking round for the book.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” said Joan impatiently.  “It’s only an old volume of Browning.”

Cries of “Shame” broke indignantly from the race-goers, and Joan received them with imperturbable indifference.  Harry Luttrell, however, went on his knees and discovering the book beneath a distant sofa, carefully dusted it.

“Did you ever read ’How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix’?” he asked.

The audience in the gallery waited in dead silence for Joan Whitworth’s answer.  It came unhesitatingly clear and in a voice of high enthusiasm.

“Isn’t it the most wonderful poem he ever wrote?”

The gallery broke into screams, catcalls, hisses and protests against Joan’s shameless recantation.

“It’s Browning, of course, but it’s not Browning at all, if you understand me,” Dennis Brown exclaimed with every show of indignation; and the whole party trooped away again to their tennis and their croquet.

Harry Luttrell placed the book upon a table and turned to Joan.

“Now what would you like to do?” he asked.

Joan shrugged her shoulders.

“We might cut into the next tennis set,” she said doubtfully.

“You could hardly play in those shoes,” said Harry Luttrell.

Joan contemplated a heel of formidable height.  Oh, where were the sandals of the higher Life?

“No, I suppose not.  Of course, there’s a—­but it wouldn’t probably interest you.”

“Wouldn’t it?” cried Harry Luttrell.

“Well, it’s a maze.  Millie Splay is rather proud of it.  The hedges are centuries old.”  She turned innocent eyes on Harry Luttrell.  “I don’t know whether you are interested in old hedges.”

It is to be feared that “minx” was the only right word for Joan Whitworth on this afternoon.  Harry Luttrell expressed an intense enthusiasm for great box hedges.