“Yes,” said Lord Belpher.  “Where were you yesterday afternoon?”

Maud’s gaze was the gaze of a young child who has never even attempted to put anything over in all its little life.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“What were you doing in Piccadilly yesterday afternoon?” said Lady Caroline.

“Piccadilly?  The place where Percy fights policemen?  I don’t understand.”

Lady Caroline was no sportsman.  She put one of those direct questions, capable of being answered only by “Yes” or “No”, which ought not to be allowed in controversy.  They are the verbal equivalent of shooting a sitting bird.

“Did you or did you not go to London yesterday, Maud?”

The monstrous unfairness of this method of attack pained Maud.  From childhood up she had held the customary feminine views upon the Lie Direct.  As long as it was a question of suppression of the true or suggestion of the false she had no scruples.  But she had a distaste for deliberate falsehood.  Faced now with a choice between two evils, she chose the one which would at least leave her self-respect.

“Yes, I did.”

Lady Caroline looked at Lord Belpher.  Lord Belpher looked at Lady Caroline.

“You went to meet that American of yours?”

Reggie Byng slid softly from the room.  He felt that he would be happier elsewhere.  He had been an acutely embarrassed spectator of this distressing scene, and had been passing the time by shuffling his feet, playing with his coat buttons and perspiring.

“Don’t go, Reggie,” said Lord Belpher.

“Well, what I mean to say is—­family row and what not—­if you see what I mean—­I’ve one or two things I ought to do—­”

He vanished.  Lord Belpher frowned a sombre frown.  “Then it was that man who knocked my hat off?”

“What do you mean?” said Lady Caroline.  “Knocked your hat off?  You never told me he knocked your hat off.”

“It was when I was asking him to let me look inside the cab.  I had grasped the handle of the door, when he suddenly struck my hat, causing it to fly off.  And, while I was picking it up, he drove away.”

“C’k,” exploded Lord Marshmoreton.  “C’k, c’k, c’k.”  He twisted his face by a supreme exertion of will power into a mask of indignation.  “You ought to have had the scoundrel arrested,” he said vehemently.  “It was a technical assault.”

“The man who knocked your hat off, Percy,” said Maud, “was not . . .  He was a different man altogether.  A stranger.”

“As if you would be in a cab with a stranger,” said Lady Caroline caustically.  “There are limits, I hope, to even your indiscretions.”

Lord Marshmoreton cleared his throat.  He was sorry for Maud, whom he loved.

“Now, looking at the matter broadly—­”

“Be quiet,” said Lady Caroline.

Lord Marshmoreton subsided.

“I wanted to avoid you,” said Maud, “so I jumped into the first cab I saw.”