A Damsel in Distress

He rose defensively.

"Let me explain."

Lady Caroline quivered with repressed emotion. This masterly woman

had not lost control of herself, but her aristocratic calm had

seldom been so severely tested. As Reggie had surmised, she had read

the report of the proceedings in the evening paper in the train, and

her world had been reeling ever since. Caesar, stabbed by Brutus,

could scarcely have experienced a greater shock. The other members

of her family had disappointed her often. She had become inured to

the spectacle of her brother working in the garden in corduroy

trousers and in other ways behaving in a manner beneath the dignity

of an Earl of Marshmoreton. She had resigned herself to the innate

flaw in the character of Maud which had allowed her to fall in love

with a nobody whom she had met without an introduction. Even Reggie

had exhibited at times democratic traits of which she thoroughly

disapproved. But of her nephew Percy she had always been sure. He

was solid rock. 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 . . . "