"Ah," I said, "now I understand--"
"Understand what?"
"A hint of something foreign--different--that there has always been about you."
"My mother was very beautiful, I believe. I don't know, because I never saw her. She died when I was quite a little child. I believe there was some tragedy connected with her death--she took an overdose of some sleeping draught by mistake. However that may be, my father was broken-hearted. Shortly afterwards, he went into the Consular Service. Everywhere he went, I went with him. When I was twenty-three, I had been nearly all over the world. It was a splendid life--I loved it."
There was a smile on her face, and her head was thrown back. She seemed living in the memory of those old glad days.
"Then my father died. He left me very badly off. I had to go and live with some old aunts in Yorkshire." She shuddered. "You will understand me when I say that it was a deadly life for a girl brought up as I had been. The narrowness, the deadly monotony of it, almost drove me mad." She paused a minute, and added in a different tone: "And then I met John Cavendish."
"Yes?"
"You can imagine that, from my aunts' point of view, it was a very good match for me. But I can honestly say it was not this fact which weighed with me. No, he was simply a way of escape from the insufferable monotony of my life."
I said nothing, and after a moment, she went on: "Don't misunderstand me. I was quite honest with him. I told him, what was true, that I liked him very much, that I hoped to come to like him more, but that I was not in any way what the world calls 'in love' with him. He declared that that satisfied him, and so--we were married."
She waited a long time, a little frown had gathered on her forehead. She seemed to be looking back earnestly into those past days.
"I think--I am sure--he cared for me at first. But I suppose we were not well matched. Almost at once, we drifted apart. He--it is not a pleasing thing for my pride, but it is the truth--tired of me very soon." I must have made some murmur of dissent, for she went on quickly: "Oh, yes, he did! Not that it matters now--now that we've come to the parting of the ways."
"What do you mean?"