"Is it in, or isn't it?" asked Johnny.

"There _is_ a copy, Lord St. Leath----" With confused fingers Miss
Milton searched in a drawer. She produced the book.

"You told me," said Joan, forgetting now in her anger St. Leath and all
the world, "that there wouldn't he a copy for weeks. If you'd told me you
were keeping one for St. Leath, that would have been different. You
shouldn't have told me a lie."

"Do you mean to say," said Johnny, opening his eyes very widely indeed,
"that you refused this copy to Miss Brandon?"

"Certainly," said Miss Milton, breathing very hard as though she had been
running a long distance. "I was keeping it for your mother."

"Well, I'm damned," said Johnny. "I beg your pardon, Miss Brandon,...but
I never heard such a thing. Does my mother pay a larger subscription than
other people?"

"Certainly not."

"Then what right had you to tell Miss Brandon a lie?"

Miss Milton, in spite of long training in the kind of warfare attaching,
of necessity, to Circulating Libraries, was very near to tears--also
murder. She would have been delighted to pierce Joan's heart with a bright
stiletto, had such a weapon been handy. She saw the softest, easiest,
idlest job in the world slipping out of her fingers; she saw herself, a