me and see you about it." Then she ordered her men to take out the
refractory leader, and lead him home; she would drive back with the
wheeler. She took no more notice of Octon, nor he of her (unless to
watch her grooms' proceedings with a sullen stare), but as she started
off, holding the broken butt of the whip in her hand, she called to me,
"Tell Miss Driver we're looking forward to dinner to-night."

The grooms had looked dangerously at Octon, and were now saying
something to one another; but it needed at least one to hold the horse,
and Octon would be far more than a match for either of them singly. His
angry eyes seemed only to hope that they would give him some excuse for
violence.

"Follow your mistress," I said to them. "It's no affair of yours."

I think that they were glad to get my sanction for their retreat. Off
they went, and I was left alone with Octon.

"If it had been a man, I wouldn't have left a whole bone in his body.
She struck me deliberately--on purpose."

"It wasn't a man. Why didn't you give her more room?"

"There was plenty of room?" he persisted. "The whole road isn't hers, is
it?" With that he turned on his heel and sauntered off toward the south
gate, in the direction of his own house.

There was the incident--and I had the grave misfortune of being the only
independent witness of it. There was the incident--and there was the
dinner-party in the evening, to which both the Aspenicks and Leonard
Octon were bidden. Clearly the matter could not stand where it was; it
was, alas! no less clear that I should have to give my evidence. Of
course the meeting at dinner must not take place; whatever else might or
might not follow from the affair, that much was certain. I went back to
the house and asked to see Jenny.

I told her the story plainly and fully--all that I had seen and all that
had been said; she did not interrupt me once.

"There it is," I ended. "His case is that he gave her plenty of room and
that she purposely lashed him over the face. Hers is that he gave her
too little room, deliberately annoying her, that her leader was restive
and she had to use her whip, and that, if she hit him, it was his own
fault for standing where he did."

"His snatching away the whip and breaking it--isn't that bad?" she
asked. "Or if he thought she meant to hit him?"

"Then it's still bad, I suppose, since she's a woman; but it's perhaps
understandable--above all in him."

"Well, what's your o