“Indeed!” Gervase said, raising his brows. “May I know in what way I can serve you, Miss Morville?”
She coloured, for his tone was not cordial, but her disconcertingly candid gaze did not waver from his face. “I shouldn’t think you could serve me at all, sir,” she said. “ I am only desirous of serving Lady St. Erth, which, perhaps, I should have made plain to you at the outset, for I can see that you think I have been guilty of presumption!”
It was now his turn to redden. He said: “I assure you, ma’am, you are mistaken!”
“Well, I don’t suppose that I am, for I expect you are used to be toad-eaten, on account of your high rank,” replied Drusilla frankly. “I should have explained to you that I have no very great opinion of Earls.”
Rising nobly to the occasion, he replied with scarcely a moment’s hesitation: “Yes, I think you should have explained that! ”
“You see, I am the daughter of Hervey Morville,” disclosed Drusilla. She added, with all the air of one throwing in a doubler: “ And of Cordelia Consett!”
The Earl could think of nothing better to say than that he was a little acquainted with a Sir James Morville, who was a member of White’s Club.
“My uncle,” acknowledged Drusilla. “He is a very worthy man, but not, of course, the equal of my Papa!”
“Of course not!” agreed Gervase.
“I daresay,” said Drusilla kindly, “that, from the circumstance of your military occupation, you have not had the leisure to read any of Papa’s works, so I should tell you that he is a Philosophical Historian. He is at the moment engaged in writing a History of the French Revolution.”