* * * * *

For Nicky had thought it out very carefully beforehand in the train.  What else could he say?  He couldn’t tell them that “Booster’s” poor little wife had lost her head and made hysterical love to him, and had been so frightened at what she had done that she had made him promise on his word of honour that, whatever happened, he wouldn’t give her away to anybody, not even to his own people.

He supposed that either Peggy had given herself away, or that poor old “Booster” had found her out.  He supposed that, having found her out, there was no other line that “Booster” could have taken.  Anyhow, there was no other line that he could take; because, in the world where these things happened, being found out would be fifty times worse for Peggy than it would be for him.

He tried to recall the scene in the back drawing-room where she had asked him so often to have tea with her alone.  The most vivid part was the end of it, after he had given his promise.  Peggy had broken down and put her head on his shoulder and cried like anything.  And it was at that moment that Nicky thought of “Booster,” and how awful and yet how funny it would be if he walked into the room and saw him there.  He had tried hard not to think what “Booster’s” face would look like; he had tried hard not to laugh as long as Peggy’s head was on his shoulder, for fear of hurting her feelings; but when she took it off he did give one half-strangled snort; for it really was the rummest thing that had ever happened to him.

He didn’t know, and he couldn’t possibly have guessed, that as soon as the door had shut on him Peggy’s passion had turned to rage and utter detestation of Nicky (for she had heard the snort); and that she had gone straight to her husband’s study and put her head on his shoulder, and cried, and told him a lie; and that it was Peggy’s lie and not the Professor’s imagination that had caused him to be sent down.  And even if Peggy had not been Lord Somebody’s daughter and related to all sorts of influential people she would still have been capable of turning every male head in the University.  For she was a small, gentle woman with enchanting manners and the most beautiful and pathetic eyes, and she had not yet been found out.  Therefore it was more likely that an undergraduate with a face like Nicky’s should lose his head than that a woman with a face like Peggy’s should, for no conceivable reason, tell a lie.  So that, even if Nicky’s word of honour had not been previously pledged to his accuser, it would have had no chance against any statement that she chose to make.  And even if he had known that she had lied, he couldn’t very well have given it against poor pretty Peggy who had lost her head and got frightened.

As Nicky packed up his clothes and his books he said, “I don’t care if I am sent down.  It would have been fifty times worse for her than it is for me.”