Her next question was more startling than the first. "How do you like Mr. Winthrop?"
I replied guardedly that I liked him very well.
"Excuse me, but that is not a correct reply. No one that cares for him at all does so in that moderate fashion. They either love or hate him."
"Have you ever known him intimately enough to be able to say how he is liked, or deserves to be?"
She answered me by a low ripple of laughter. My perplexity was increasing, but I quite decided this Hermione Le Grange, as she called herself, had not a very sad heart to get comforted.
"Do you find Mr. Winthrop very amiable, in fact would you call him a lady's man?"
I paused to think carefully what answer I should give. "If he were a lady's man, probably before this he would have taken one for a wife."
"You have only answered half of my question," she said so gently I could not resent it.
"My guardian is very patient and indulgent with me. If he were more so I should find it hard to leave him some day."
"You mean when the day of marriage comes?"