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

The words, which to Olivia had at first sounded something like a knell, presently became, from the monotony of repetition, nothing but a sing-song.  She went on writing them mechanically, but her thoughts began to busy themselves otherwise.

“Drusilla, do you remember Jack Berrington?”

The question slipped out before she saw its significance.  She might not have perceived it so quickly even then had it not been for the second of hesitation before Drusilla answered and the quaver in her voice when she did.

“Y-es.”

The amount of information contained in the embarrassment with which this monosyllable was uttered caused Olivia to feel faint.  It implied that Drusilla had been better posted than herself; and if Drusilla, why not others?

“Do you know what makes me think of him?”

Again there was a second of hesitation.  Without relaxing the speed with which she went on scribbling the same oft-repeated sentence, Olivia knew that her companion stayed her pen and half turned round.

“I can guess.”

Olivia kept on writing.  “How long have you known?”

Drusilla threw back the answer while blotting with unnecessary force the card she had just written:  “A couple of days.”

“Has it got about—­generally?”

“Generally might be too much to say.  Some people have got wind of it; and, of course, a thing of that kind spreads.”

“Of course.”

After all, she reflected, perhaps it was just as well that the story should have come out.  It was no more possible to keep it quiet than to calm an earthquake.  She had said just now to her father that she would regard publicity less as disgrace than as part of the process of paying up.  Very well!  If they were a mark for idle tongues, then so much the better, since in that way they were already contributing some few pence toward quenching the debt.

“I should feel worse about it,” Drusilla explained, after a silence of some minutes, “if I didn’t think that Peter Davenant was trying to do something to—­to help Cousin Henry out.”

Olivia wrote energetically.  “What’s he doing?”

“Oh, the kind of thing men do.  They seem to have wonderful ways of raising money.”

“How do you know he’s trying it?”

“I don’t know for certain; I’ve only an idea.  I rather gather it by the queer way he comes and goes.  The minute a thing is in Peter’s hands—­”

“Have you such a lot of confidence in him?”

“For this sort of thing—­yes.  He’s terribly able, so they say, financially.  For the matter of that, you can see it by the way he’s made all that money.  Bought mines, or something, and sold them again.  Bought ’em for nothing, and sold ’em for thousands and thousands.”

“Did I ever tell you that he once asked me to marry him?”