"But the other things aren't equal now. Don't you see? They're changed."
"You're not changed." Drusilla felt these words to be dangerous. It was a relief to her that Olivia should contradict them promptly.
"Oh yes, I am. I'm changed—in value. With papa's troubles there's a depreciation in everything we are."
Drusilla repeated these words to her father and mother at table when she went home to luncheon. "If she feels like that now," she commented, "what will she say when she knows all?—if she ever has to know it."
"But she hasn't changed," Mrs. Temple argued.
"It doesn't make any difference in her."
Drusilla shook her head. "Yes, it does, mother dear. You don't know anything about it."
"I know enough about it," Mrs. Temple declared, with some asperity, "to see that she will be the same Olivia Guion after her father has gone to prison as she was in the days of her happiness. If there's any change, it will be to make her a better and nobler character. She's just the type to be—to be perfected through suffering."
"Y-y-es," Drusilla admitted, her head inclined to one side. "That might be quite true in one way; but it wouldn't help Rupert Ashley to keep his place in the Sussex Rangers."
"Do you mean to say they'd make him give it up?"