The next instant, while the idea was still incomplete in my mind, the end of the lash caught him full on the face. He jumped back with a shout of rage. The leader gave a wild plunge toward the other side of the road; the cart swayed and rocked. The grooms leaped down and ran as hard as they could to the leader's head. Octon sprang forward, caught hold of the whip, wrenched it from Lady Aspenick's hand, almost pulling her out of her seat, broke it in the middle across his knee, and flung the fragments down on the road. I ran up hastily. "You did that on purpose," he said, his voice shaking with rage. There was a red streak across his face from the cheek bone to the chin. She was pale, but she looked at him calmly through her eyeglasses. "Nonsense," she answered, "but if I had, it would have been only your deserts. Why didn't you give me room?" "There was plenty of room if you knew how to drive; and, if you wanted more, you could have asked for it civilly." "You must have seen I had a young horse." She turned to me. "Give me my whip, please, Mr. Austin. You saw what happened? I'll ask my husband to come 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.