He, at least, she had always felt, would never do anything to injure the family prestige.  And now, so to speak, “Lo, Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.”  In other words, Percy was the worst of the lot.  Whatever indiscretions the rest had committed, at least they had never got the family into the comic columns of the evening papers.  Lord Marshmoreton might wear corduroy trousers and refuse to entertain the County at garden parties and go to bed with a book when it was his duty to act as host at a formal ball; Maud might give her heart to an impossible person whom nobody had ever heard of; and Reggie might be seen at fashionable restaurants with pugilists; but at any rate evening paper poets had never written facetious verses about their exploits.  This crowning degradation had been reserved for the hitherto blameless Percy, who, of all the young men of Lady Caroline’s acquaintance, had till now appeared to have the most scrupulous sense of his position, the most rigid regard for the dignity of his great name.  Yet, here he was, if the carefully considered reports in the daily press were to be believed, spending his time in the very spring-tide of his life running about London like a frenzied Hottentot, brutally assaulting the police.  Lady Caroline felt as a bishop might feel if he suddenly discovered that some favourite curate had gone over to the worship of Mumbo Jumbo.

“Explain?” she cried.  “How can you explain?  You—­my nephew, the heir to the title, behaving like a common rowdy in the streets of London . . . your name in the papers . . . "

“If you knew the circumstances.”

“The circumstances?  They are in the evening paper.  They are in print.”

“In verse,” added Lord Marshmoreton.  He chuckled amiably at the recollection.  He was an easily amused man.  “You ought to read it, my boy.  Some of it was capital . . .”

“John!”

“But deplorable, of course,” added Lord Marshmoreton hastily.  “Very deplorable.”  He endeavoured to regain his sister’s esteem by a show of righteous indignation.  “What do you mean by it, damn it?  You’re my only son.  I have watched you grow from child to boy, from boy to man, with tender solicitude.  I have wanted to be proud of you.  And all the time, dash it, you are prowling about London like a lion, seeking whom you may devour, terrorising the metropolis, putting harmless policemen in fear of their lives. . .”

“Will you listen to me for a moment?” shouted Percy.  He began to speak rapidly, as one conscious of the necessity of saying his say while the saying was good.  “The facts are these.  I was walking along Piccadilly on my way to lunch at the club, when, near Burlington Arcade, I was amazed to see Maud.”

Lady Caroline uttered an exclamation.

“Maud?  But Maud was here.”