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 own opinion about it?" "That's just what I don't want to give," I objected. "But you must. I have to come to some decision about this." "Well, then--I think he did leave her room--enough and a little more than enough; but I also think that he meant to annoy her. I'm sure he didn't mean to put her in danger of an upset, but I do think that, with such a horse as she was driving, an upset might have been the result, and he ought to have thought of that--only he doesn't know much about horses. On the other hand I don't think she deliberately made up her mind to hit him--but I do think she meant to go as near to it as she could without actually doing it; I think she meant to make him jump. That's about my idea of the truth of the matter." "Yes, I daresay," she said thoughtfully. "When Sir John comes to you, bring him straight up here. They mustn't meet to-night, of course, but I should like to see Sir John first--if he comes this morning or soon after lunch." "It's all very tiresome," said I lugubriously. She suddenly put her hands in mine--in one of her moments of impulse. "Oh, yes, yes, dear friend!" she murmured with an acute note of distress in her voice. Tiresome as the affair was, it hardly seemed to call for that; but I had not yet realized her position in its full difficulty; I did not know what every new proof of Octon's "impossibility" meant to her. Sir John arrived, hot-haste, before lunch. Happily Fillingford was with him. I say happily, for I gathered that the angry husband's first intention had been to go straight to Hatcham Ford and undertake the horse-whipping of Leonard Octon--which enterprise must have ended in broken bones for Sir John, and probably the police court for both combatants. Fillingford happened to be with him when Lady Aspenick arrived at home and told her story; with difficulty he dissuaded Aspenick from violent measures; above all, nothing must get into the papers; all the same, it was a case for decisive private action. According to my orders I took Sir John up to Jenny, and Fillingford came with us.