"I'll try if you want me to," I promised. "But I don't expect to succeed."
Major Murray looked more anxious than I had seen him since Mrs. Brandreth appeared on deck that second day at sea. "Hasn't she confided in you at all?" he asked.
"Only"—I hesitated an instant—"only to tell me of her love, and her engagement to you." This was the truth, with one tiny reservation. I couldn't give Rosemary away, by mentioning the "obstacle" at which she'd hinted.
"She never even told you about our first engagement, eight years ago?" he persisted.
"No."
"Well, I'd like to tell you that, if the story won't bore you?"
"It will interest me," I said. "But perhaps Mrs. Brandreth mightn't——"
"She won't mind; I'm sure of that, from things she's said. But it's a subject easier for me to talk about than for her. She was travelling in Italy with an aunt—a sister of her mother's—when we met. She was just seventeen. I fell in love with her at first sight. Do you wonder? It was at Bellagio, but I followed her and the aunt from place to place. The aunt was a widow, who'd married an American, and I imagined that she wasn't kind to her niece—the girl looked so unhappy. But I did Mrs. Brandreth an injustice——"
"Mrs. Brandreth?" I had to interrupt. "Rosemary was already——"
"No, no! The aunt's name was Mrs. Brandreth. The man Rosemary married a few weeks later was the nephew of her aunt's American husband. When I asked Rosemary to be my wife, I heard the whole story. Rosemary told me herself. The aunt, Mrs. John Brandreth, came to England to visit her sister. It wasn't long after her husband had died, and she wasn't strong, so the nephew—Guy Brandreth—travelled with her. He was a West Point graduate, it seems; probably you know that West Point is the American Sandhurst? He was still in the Army and on long leave. He and the aunt both stayed at Mrs. Hillier's house in Surrey, and—I suppose you can guess what happened?"