“Your own heart was never touched?”
“Never, until I met Laura Frith.”
“Who was she?”
“She was my future wife.”
“And how was it you singled her out from the rest? Was she very beautiful?”
“No. It cannot be said that she was beautiful. Indeed, she was accounted plain. I think it was her great dignity that attracted me. She did not smile archly at me, nor shake her ringlets. In those days it was the fashion for young ladies to embroider slippers for such men in holy orders as best pleased their fancy. I received hundreds—thousands—of such slippers. But never a pair from Laura Frith.”
“She did not love you?” asked Zuleika, who had seated herself on the floor at her grandfather’s feet.
I concluded that she did not. It interested me very greatly. It fired me.
“Was she incapable of love?”
“No, it was notorious in her circle that she had loved often, but loved in vain.”