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."