Braybrooke had not blushed for probably at least forty years, but he blushed scarlet now, and seized his beard with a hand that looked thoroughly unstrung. “My dear Miss Cronin!” he said, in a voice which was almost hoarse with protest. “You absolutely misunderstood me. It is much too la--I mean that I have no intention whatever of changing my condition. No, no! Let us talk of something else. So you are reading ‘_Le Disciple_’” (he picked it up). “A very striking book! I always think it one of Bourget’s very best.” He poured forth an energetic cataract of words in praise of Miss Cronin’s favourite author, and presently got away without any further quite definite misunderstanding. But when he was out in the corridor on his way to the lift he indulged himself in a very unwonted expression of acrimonious condemnation. “Damn these red-headed old women!” he muttered in his beard. “There’s no doing anything with them! The idea of my going to her to propose for Miss Van Tuyn! What next, I wonder?” When he was out in Brook Street he hesitated for a moment, then took out his watch and looked at it. Half-past three! He thought of the Wallace Collection. It seemed to draw him strangely just then. He put his watch back and walked towards Manchester Square. He had gained the Square and was about to enter the enclosure before Hertford House by the gateway on the left, when he saw Miss Van Tuyn come out by the gateway on the right, and walk slowly towards Oxford Street in deep conversation with a small horsey-looking man, whose face he could not see, but whose back and legs, and whose dress and headgear, strongly suggested to him the ring at Newmarket and the Paddock at Ascot. Braybrooke hesitated. The attraction of the Wallace Collection no longer drew him. Besides, it was getting late. On the other hand, he scarcely liked to interrupt an earnest tete-a-tete. If it had not been that he was exceptionally strung up at that moment he would probably have gone quietly off to one of his clubs. But who knew what that foolish old woman at Claridge’s might say to Miss Van Tuyn when she reached her hotel? It really was essential in the sacred interest of truth that he should forestall Fanny Cronin. The jockey--if it was a jockey--Miss Van Tuyn was with must put up with an interruption. But the interruption must be brought about naturally. It would not do to come up behind them. That would seem too intrusive. He must manage to skip round deftly when the occasion offered, and by a piece of masterly strategy to come upon them face to face. Seized of this intention Braybrooke did a thing he had never done before; he “dogged” two human beings, walking with infinite precaution.