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."

"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