"I have heard nothing—nothing in particular. What is it?"
"The inevitable woman."
"She has come at last, has she? Come to stay?"
"He is engaged to her."
Mr. Thorne breathed his astonishment in a low whistle. "You don't like it?" he surmised at once.
"Like it! If it were merely a question of liking! She is impossible. She knows it, her people know it, and they have not told him. It remains"—
"What is the girl's name?"
"Henry, she is not a girl! That is, she is a girl forced into premature womanhood, like all the fruits of this hotbed climate. She is that Miss Benedet whom you helped, whom you saved—how many years ago? When Willy was a schoolboy."
"Well, she was saved, presumably."
"Saved from what, and by a total stranger!"