Letitia looked deliberately the other way. It was just as well that her aunt should not see the flash in her eyes.
"We do not see much of him," she replied. "He gallops round the park every day like a lunatic, and he spends a great deal of time, I think, in his car."
"My dear," the Duchess said impressively, "David Thain may have his peculiarities, but he is really a most simple and sincere person. I was attracted to him upon the steamer simply because of his shyness, and a good thing for you, dear, that I was. It must make quite a difference to have Broomleys properly let to a man who can pay a good rent for it."
"We have never denied that," Letitia admitted drily. "We are keeping house now upon the first quarter's rent."
"Is it my fancy," her aunt continued, stooping to pick herself a sprig of lavender, "or do you really dislike Mr. Thain?"
"Intensely!" Letitia confessed with emphasis.
The Duchess was surprised.
"Well, really!" she exclaimed. "And to me he seems such a harmless, inoffensive person, absolutely without self-consciousness and not in the least bumptious."
"What on earth has he to be bumptious about?" Letitia scoffed. "He has simply made a lot of money out of other people."
"That shows brains, at least," her aunt reminded her.