“At that moment the fool of a policeman came up and wanted to know what the matter was.  I lost my head.  I admit it freely.  The policeman grasped my shoulder, and I struck him.”

“Where?” asked Lord Marshmoreton, a stickler for detail.

“What does that matter?” demanded Lady Caroline.  “You did quite right, Percy.  These insolent jacks in office ought not to be allowed to manhandle people.  Tell me, what this man was like?”

“Extremely ordinary-looking.  In fact, all I can remember about him was that he was clean-shaven.  I cannot understand how Maud could have come to lose her head over such a man.  He seemed to me to have no attraction whatever,” said Lord Belpher, a little unreasonably, for Apollo himself would hardly appear attractive when knocking one’s best hat off.

“It must have been the same man.”

“Precisely.  If we wanted further proof, he was an American.  You recollect that we heard that the man in Wales was American.”

There was a portentous silence.  Percy stared at the floor.  Lady Caroline breathed deeply.  Lord Marshmoreton, feeling that something was expected of him, said “Good Gad!” and gazed seriously at a stuffed owl on a bracket.  Maud and Reggie Byng came in.

“What ho, what ho, what ho!” said Reggie breezily.  He always believed in starting a conversation well, and putting people at their ease.  “What ho!  What ho!”

Maud braced herself for the encounter.

“Hullo, Percy, dear,” she said, meeting her brother’s accusing eye with the perfect composure that comes only from a thoroughly guilty conscience.  “What’s all this I hear about your being the Scourge of London?  Reggie says that policemen dive down manholes when they see you coming.”

The chill in the air would have daunted a less courageous girl.  Lady Caroline had risen, and was staring sternly.  Percy was pulling the puffs of an overwrought soul.  Lord Marshmoreton, whose thoughts had wandered off to the rose garden, pulled himself together and tried to look menacing.  Maud went on without waiting for a reply.  She was all bubbling gaiety and insouciance, a charming picture of young English girlhood that nearly made her brother foam at the mouth.

“Father dear,” she said, attaching herself affectionately to his buttonhole, “I went round the links in eighty-three this morning.  I did the long hole in four.  One under par, a thing I’ve never done before in my life.” ("Bless my soul,” said Lord Marshmoreton weakly, as, with an apprehensive eye on his sister, he patted his daughter’s shoulder.) “First, I sent a screecher of a drive right down the middle of the fairway.  Then I took my brassey and put the ball just on the edge of the green.  A hundred and eighty yards if it was an inch.  My approach putt—­”

Lady Caroline, who was no devotee of the royal and ancient game, interrupted the recital.

“Never mind what you did this morning.  What did you do yesterday afternoon?”