I let my head drop, as a man might who discovers he has said too much. "Oh, nothing," I replied. Archie was just as sharp as--neither more nor less than--I wished him to be. "A lot of fuss about nothing--if it's really nothing," he said suspiciously. The next moment he had looked hard into my face, taken a long breath, and, suddenly bringing his hand down on his thigh, broken into loud laughter. "By Jove! Jeff--I really believe--let's have a look at you--by Jove! I really do--_I believe you're in love_! What a----How ripping, I mean! Best congratulations, old chap--my turn this time--ha ha ha ha!" I drew myself heavily up. The kind of thing I was doing has to be done rather carefully. "Look here, Archie--" I began, trembling between the wrath I felt and the not-too-much wrath I must appear to display; but he interrupted me: "Well, that's a knock-out! Who'd have dreamed----" "Why not?" I demanded sharply. "Oh, I didn't mean that!" he made such haste to say that it was plain as a pikestaff that he had meant precisely "that." "I only meant, how surprising--how unexpected. I mean----" I frowned. "_Should_ you find it so--if it _were_ so?" "Should!" he said, puzzled. "... Isn't it so, Jeff?" "No," I replied; but a "No" that so exquisitely contradicted itself that I gave myself nothing less than admiration for the performance. "No?" he echoed. "You're lying, Jeff--you _are_!" he broke out triumphantly. "I can tell by the way you say it! So _that's_ it! Dashed if I didn't think there was something!... Who is she, Jeff?" But that, as you may suppose, it was no part of my plan to tell. Neither was it part of that plan to enjoin either secrecy or the other thing upon him. That, I thought grimly, might quite safely be left to take care of itself. "Mandrill, my dear; you really must take a memory powder!..." I seemed to hear Miss Windus' voice again over the bookshelves. Oh yes, if he would give currency to that Zoo nonsense he could be trusted not to keep the richer joke, of Jeffries in love, to himself!