“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 good looks.  Hillyard was presented to Dennis and Miranda Brown, a young couple two years married, and to Mr. Harold Jupp, a man of Hillyard’s age.  Harold Jupp was a queer-looking person with a long, thin, brown face, and a straight, wide mouth too close to a small pointed chin.  Harold Jupp carried about with him a very aura of horses.  Horses were his only analogy; he thought in terms of horses; and perhaps, as a consequence, although he could give no reasons for his judgments upon people, those judgments as a rule were conspicuously sound.  Jupp shook hands with Hillyard, and turned to the student at the window.

“Well, Joan, how have you lived without us?  Aren’t you bored with your large, beautiful self?”

Joan looked at him with an annihilating glance, and crossed the room to Millie Splay.

“Bored!  How could I be?  When I have so many priceless wasted hours to make up for!”

“Yes, yes, my dear,” said Millie Splay soothingly.  “Come and have some tea.”

“That’s it, Joan,” cried Jupp, unrepressed by the girl’s contempt.  “Come and have tea with the barbarians.”

Joan addressed herself to Dennis Brown, as one condescending from Olympus.

“I hope you had a good day.”