"I will know her better soon," she stated.
"Not too quick," he warned, fearing that she might blunder. "You know yourself that she is not a girl to be hurried. Tell me, now, what men are there of her family?"
"Only her father."
"And what sort of man is he?"
Mrs. Harmon's vocabulary was not wide. "Why, spreading," she explained. "Jaunty, you know."
"And his circumstances?"
"He is well off," she answered. "Keeps a carriage and spends freely. There was money in the family, and his wife had some too. You know how those old fortunes grow."
Or disappear, thought Ellis; he had been investigating the Colonel's standing. "Miss Blanchard has no cousins?" he asked aloud. "No other men attached to her?"
"Attached in one sense," she replied, "but not connected."