ys....

We seemed for a time to be confronted before an audience that hesitated
to interfere. "How dare you name my sister to me?" he shouted at me, and
brought to my mind the amazing folly of which he was capable. I
perceived Mary's name flung to the four winds of heaven.

"You idiot, Philip!" I cried. "I don't _know_ your sister. I've not seen
her--scarcely seen her for years. I ask you--I ask you for a match-box
or something and you hit me."

"If you dare to speak to her----!"

"You fool!" I cried, going nearer to him and trying to make him
understand. But he winced and recoiled defensively. "I'm sorry," I said
to the commissionaire who was intervening. "Lord Maxton has made a
mistake."

"Is he a member?" said someone in the background, and somebody else
suggested calling a policeman. I perceived that only a prompt retreat
would save the whole story of our quarrel from the newspapers. So far as
I could see nobody knew me there except Philip. I had to take the risks
of his behavior; manifestly I couldn't control it. I made no further
attempt to explain anything to anybody. Everyone was a little too
perplexed for prompt action, and so the advantage in that matter lay
with me. I walked through the door, and with what I imagined to be an
appearance of the utmost serenity down the steps. I noted an ascending
member glance at me with an expression of exceptional interest, but it
was only after I had traversed the length of Pall Mall that I realized
that my lip and the corner of my nostril were both bleeding profusely. I
called a cab when I discovered my handkerchief scarlet, and retreated to
my flat and cold ablutions. Then I sat down to write a letter to
Tarvrille, with a clamorous "Urgent, Please forward if away" above the
address, and tell him at least to suppress Philip. But within the club
that blockhead, thinking of nothing but the appearances of our fight and
his own credit, was varying his assertion that he had thrashed me, with
denunciations of me as a "blackguard," and giving half a dozen men a
highly colored, improvised, and altogether improbable account of my
relentless pursuit and persecution of Lady Mary Justin, and how she had
left London to avoid me. They listened, no doubt, with extreme avidity.
The matrimonial relations of the Justins had long been a matter for
speculative minds.

And while Philip was doing this, Guy, away in Mayo still, was writing a
tender, trusting, and all too explicit letter t