“So I did; but everyone doesn’t think so.”
“No, of course not, or more people would try.”
“Well, if she is capable of making that reflection she is capable of making this further one,” I went on: “that I must have a particular reason for not doing as others do, in spite of the interest she offers—for not leaving her alone.” Miss Tita looked as if she failed to grasp this rather complicated proposition; so I continued, “If you have not told her what I said to you the other night may she not at least have guessed it?”
“I don’t know; she is very suspicious.”
“But she has not been made so by indiscreet curiosity, by persecution?”
“No, no; it isn’t that,” said Miss Tita, turning on me a somewhat troubled face. “I don’t know how to say it: it’s on account of something—ages ago, before I was born—in her life.”
“Something? What sort of thing?” I asked as if I myself could have no idea.
“Oh, she has never told me,” Miss Tita answered; and I was sure she was speaking the truth.
Her extreme limpidity was almost provoking, and I felt for the moment that she would have been more satisfactory if she had been less ingenuous. “Do you suppose it’s something to which Jeffrey Aspern’s letters and papers—I mean the things in her possession—have reference?”
“I daresay it is!” my companion exclaimed as if this were a very happy suggestion. “I have never looked at any of those things.”