“I am very fond of books, and of music,” she said; “but one gets tired of being alone after a time. It seems such ages since Martin and I said good-bye in Venice. I was dreadfully unhappy at first. I stand almost alone in the world, when I am parted from him.”
“Your father and mother are dead?” in gentlest inquiry.
“Oh no; they are not dead; they are at Dinan,” she said, almost as if it were the same thing.
“And that is very far from Trelasco.”
“They never leave Dinan. The kind of life suits them. Mamma knits; papa has his club and his English newspapers. People enjoy the English papers so much more when they live abroad than when they are at home. Mamma is a very bad sailor. It would be a risk for her to cross. If my sister or I were dangerously ill, mamma would come. But it would be at the hazard of her life. Papa has often told me so.”
“And your father, is he a bad sailor?”
“He is rather worse than mamma.”
“Then I conclude you were married at Dinan?”
“Oh yes; I never left Brittany until my wedding-day.”
“What a pretty idea! It is as if Major Disney had found a new kind of wild flower in some cranny of the old grey wall that guards the town.”