"Why?"
She shook her head:
"I believe he—I know he must be in painfully straightened circumstances."
"I have heard so," nodded Colonel Arran.
"Oh, he certainly is!" she said with decision. "He lost everything in the panic, and he lives in a most wretched neighbourhood, and he hasn't any business except a very little now and then. It made me quite unhappy," she added naively.
"And you find him personally agreeable?"
"Yes, I do. I didn't at first—" She checked herself—"I mean I did at the very first—then I didn't—then I did again, then I—didn't—" The delicate colour stole into her cheeks; she lifted her wineglass, looked into it pensively, set it back on the table. "But I understand him better now, I think."
"What, in him, do you understand better now?"
"I—don't—know."
"Is he a better kind of a man than you thought him at first?"