"Are you happy in Ireland?" said I.
She looked round at me quickly. From an utter stranger I can understand how odd that question must have seemed.
"Do I like Ireland, do you mean?" she asked, and that was the first time properly that I heard her voice. It was a whisper, full of timidity. I had to bend my head to catch the words, and they sounded like the steps of feet in satin slippers through some far-off corridor of an old house. This is my way of describing things. It may mean nothing to you. I only know I heard the tiny heel taps, and unconsciously I lowered my voice to answer to them.
"No," said I, and my voice ran almost to a whisper too. "No—I didn't mean that. You're shut up all day in that room with the white lace curtains. I don't suppose you can either like or dislike Ireland. You never see it. No—I meant what I said. Are you happy in Ireland?"
I swear if I had not said it in a whisper it would have frightened her. As sure as Fate, she would have run away. But because I whispered—by the chance of God, too, perhaps—she just spoke out of her little heart and told me she was not.
It was so simple and so genuine an admission that, though I knew it well, I was still utterly unprepared to hear her confess it. It took me completely by surprise. I found myself marvelling at her ingenuousness, for, as you must know well, it was so unlike her sex, who will seldom admit to any emotion but what does justice to their appearance, and never will they confess it to a total stranger.
It disarmed me. Had she said she was happy, indeed, I could have gone on gaily, knowing what I believed. But there is no so violent an interruption to conversation as the sudden truth. For a few moments it left me in silence. I could not have believed it possible that she was so unhappy as that, and all through my mind there surged an overwhelming tide of bitter resentment against those who were the cause of it. I cursed that young cub in England from the bottom of my heart. I have no doubt my eyes had a ludicrous expression in them as I glanced at the Miss Fennells before us.
"What makes you unhappy?" I asked, at length.
She looked nervously about her as though there might be listeners everywhere.
"It's not like where I come from. It's all so dark and grey. It was so bright in Dominica. I know the sun shines here, like it did to-day—but it's so different."