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?"
"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.