Chapter Eight
Silvester defied all of Gussie’s expectations. When she entered the dining-hall an hour later, escorted by an obliging Lord Maundevyle, she beheld her disgraceful ancestor seated atop a vast silver epergne occupying the centre of the table. He sat tall (or as tall as his diminutive frame permitted), and alert, as though he expected to enjoy an entertainment of no common order.
The epergne being not wholly dissimilar in hue to Silvester’s own grey, and possessed of a variety of flourishes and extrusions besides, nobody save Gussie immediately registered the presence of the grotesque.
Except, perhaps, for Lord Maundevyle, whose lips formed a small, half-suppressed smile as he bowed Gussie into her seat, for which she could not otherwise account.
‘I trust you have passed a p
