Certain
it is, however, that when the fashionable London papers announced that a
marriage had been arranged, and would shortly take place, between
Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Ashley, of the Sussex Rangers, and of Heneage
Place, Belvoir, Leicestershire, and Olivia Margaret, only child of Henry
Guion, Esquire, of Tory Hill, Waverton, near Boston, Massachusetts,
U.S.A., no one offered warmer congratulations than the lady in whose
house the interesting pair had met. There were people who ascribed this
attitude to the fact that, being constitutionally "game," she refused to
betray her disappointment. She had been "awfully game," they said, when
poor Gerald Fane, also of the Sussex Rangers, was cut off with enteric
at Peshawur. But the general opinion was to the effect that, not wanting
Rupert Ashley (for some obscure, feminine reason) for herself, she had
magnanimously bestowed him elsewhere. Around tea-tables, and at church
parade, it was said "Americans do that," with some comment on the
methods of the transfer.
On every ground, then, Drusilla was entitled to this first look at the
presents, some of which had come from Ashley's brother officers, who
were consequently brother officers of the late Captain Fane; so that
when she telephoned saying she was afraid that they, her parents and
herself, couldn't come to dinner that evening, because a former ward of
her father's--Olivia must remember Peter Davenant!--was arriving to stay
with them for a week or two, Miss Guion had answered, "Oh, bother! bring
him along," and the matter was arranged.
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