“Rather!”
“Prettier than Gwendoline? Prettier than her sister?”
“Well, I don’t know so much about that neither—different type—graver, softer in the eye and hair, taller, darker, not so young; but that poor dead girl was something to make the mouth water, too, sir—such a cut diamond! to see her in her full war-paint, turned out like a daisy!—in short, lovely beings, both of ’em, both of ’em.”
“Fairly well fixed, the mother?”
“You mean financially? Oh, I think so. Got a fine place down in Warwickshire, I know—not far from Kenilworth. Good old family, and that sort of thing.”
“But how on earth this man Strauss, more or less an adventurer, I take it, could have got hold of such a girl, to the extent of drawing her from her happy home, and sending her on the stage. He didn’t marry her, Dibbin? He didn’t marry her?”
“How can I say?” asked Dibbin, blinking. “We can all make a shrewd guess; but one can’t be absolutely certain, though the fact of her suicide would seem to be a sort of proof.”
“What do the mother and Miss Mordaunt think of it? Do they assume that she was married? Or do they know enough of the world to guess that she was not? I suppose you don’t know.”
“They know what the world thinks, I’m afraid,” answered Dibbin. “I am sure of that much. Yes, they know, they know. I have been with Mrs. Mordaunt a good many times, for one reason or another. I can tell how she feels, and I’m afraid that she not only guesses what the world thinks, but agrees with the world’s view. On the other hand, I have reason to think that Miss Mordaunt has an obstinate faith in her sister, and neither believes that she died unmarried, nor even that she committed suicide. Well, well, you can’t expect much clear reasoning from a poor sister with a head half turned with grief.”
Dibbin tossed off his brandy, while David paced the room, his hands behind him, with a clouded brow.