“Why do you think anything has happened to her?”
“Why? Well, girls don’t have that air of melancholy absence for nothing. She is brooding upon something, you may be sure. But you have had so many more opportunities than I! Do you mean that you haven’t suspected a tragical past far her?”
“I don’t know,” said Breckon, a little restively, “that I have allowed myself to speculate about her past.”
“That is, you oughtn’t to have allowed yourself to do so. Well, there I agree with you. But a woman may do so without impertinence, and I am sure that Miss Kenton has a story. I have watched her, and her face has told me everything but the story.”
Breckon would not say that some such revelation had been made to him, and in the absence of an answer from him Miss Rasmith asked, “Is she cultivated, too?”
“Too?”
“Like her mother.”
“Oh! I should say she had read a good dial. And she’s bookish, yes, in a simple-hearted kind of way.”
“She asks you if you have read ‘the book of the year,’ and whether you don’t think the heroine is a beautiful character?”
“Not quite so bad as that. But if you care to be serious about her!”