"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."