“I should suppose the tiger to be leaping upon me.”
“Oh, no, indeed you could not, for it is facing the window!”
“Unanswerable! Pray, why are you so anxious to preserve the epergne, ma’am?”
“Well, I think Lady St. Erth might be a little mollified, if it were still in the room; and it would be quite improper, you know, to consign all your heirlooms, which you do not like, to dark cupboards,” said Miss Morville reasonably. “I daresay there are several changes you will wish to make at Stanyon, but it is a favourite saying of my brother Jack’s — my military brother — that one should always try to get over heavy ground as light as one can.”
He smiled. “Very true! In what regiment is your military brother?”
“A line regiment: I daresay you would not know,” said Miss Morville. “ You, I collect, were in the 7th Hussars — one of the crack cavalry regiments!”
The Earl, a little shaken, admitted it.
“The Lilywhite Seventh,” said Miss Morville indulgently, shepherding him out of the room. “ I know!”
“And the devil of it is,” said the Earl, twenty minutes later, to his cousin, “that I have let that wretched chit talk me into permitting the continued existence of that abominable epergne in my dining-room!”