common sense.  From the point of view of a man of business it was more than a little mad to refuse the money that would pay his creditors, hush up a scandal, and keep the course of daily life running in something like its accustomed channel, merely because for the rest of his days he must be placed in a humiliating moral situation.  He wouldn’t like that, of course; and yet everything else was so much worse for his clients, even more than for himself.  This was something she did not see.  In spite of the measure in which he had agreed with her heroic views of “paying,” he returned to that thought after she had kissed him and gone away.

During the conversation with him Olivia had so completely forgotten Davenant that when she descended to the oval sitting-room she was scarcely surprised to find that he had left and that Drusilla Fane was waiting in his place.

“You see, Olivia,” Mrs. Fane reasoned, in her sympathetic, practical way, “that if you’re not going to have your wedding on the 28th, you’ve got to do something about it now.”

“What would you do?”

Olivia brought her mind back with some effort from the consideration of the greater issues to fix it on the smaller ones.  In its way Drusilla’s interference was a welcome diversion, since the point she raised was important enough to distract Olivia’s attention from decisions too poignant to dwell on long.

“I’ve thought that over,” Drusilla explained—­“mother and I together.  If we were you we’d simply scribble a few lines on your card and send it round by post.”

“Yes?  And what would you scribble?”

“We’d say—­you see, it wouldn’t commit you to anything too pointed—­we’d say, simply, ’Miss Guion’s marriage to Colonel Ashley will not take place on October 28th.’  There you’d have nothing but the statement, and they could make of it what they liked.”

“Which would be a good deal, wouldn’t it?”

“Human nature being human nature, Olivia, you can hardly expect people not to talk.  But you’re in for that, you know, whatever happens now.”

“Oh, of course.”

“So that the thing to do is to keep them from going to the church next Thursday fortnight, and from pestering you with presents in the mean while.  When you’ve headed them off on that you’ll feel more free to—­to give your mind to other things.”

The suggestion was so sensible that Olivia fell in with it at once.  She accepted, too, Drusilla’s friendly offer to help in the writing of the cards, of which it would be necessary to send out some two hundred.  There being no time to lose, they set themselves immediately to the task, Drusilla at the desk, and Olivia writing on a blotting-pad at a table.  They worked for twenty minutes or half an hour in silence.

“Miss Guion’s marriage to Colonel Ashley will not take place on October 28th.”

“Miss Guion’s marriage to Colonel Ashley will not take place on October 28th.”