“No, no.”
“Or, or any one very decidedly beneath you?” she continued, with some relief, but anxiously still.
Despard hesitated.
“That’s exactly what I can’t quite say,” he replied. “She’s a lady by birth, that I’m sure of. But she has seen very little. Lived always in a village apparently—she has been in some ways unusually well and carefully educated. But I’m quite positive she’s poor, really with nothing of her own, I fancy. I’m not sure—it has struck me once or twice that perhaps she had been intended for a governess.”
Mrs Selby gasped, but checked herself.
“She has friends who are kind to her. I met her at some good houses. It was at Mrs Englewood’s first of all, but since then I’ve seen her at much better places.”
“But why do you speak so doubtfully—you keep saying ‘I fancy’—‘I suppose.’ It must be easy to find out all about her.”
“No; that’s just it. She’s curiously, no—not reserved—she’s too nice and well-bred for that sort of thing—but, if you can understand, she’s frankly backward in speaking of herself. She’ll talk of anything but herself. She has an old invalid father whom she adores—and—upon my soul, that’s about all she has ever told me.”
“You can ask Mrs Englewood, surely.”
Despard frowned.