“She's intolerably passive. Or not passive, either. She says what she thinks, but she doesn't seem to have thought of many things. Did she ever tell you about her father?”
“No,” said Dunham.
“I mean about his dying of consumption?”
“No, she never spoke of him to me. Was he—”
“Um. It appears that we have been upon terms of confidence, then.” Staniford paused, with one boot in his hand. “I should never have thought it.”
“What was her father?” asked Dunham.
“Upon my word, I don't know. I didn't seem to get beyond elemental statements of intimate fact with her. He died in California, where she was born; and he always had a longing to go to Italy. That was rather pretty.”
“It's very touching, I think.”
“Yes, of course. We might fancy this about Lurella: that she has a sort of piety in visiting the scenes that her father wished to visit, and that—Well, anything is predicable of a girl who says so little and looks so much. She's certainly very handsome; and I'm bound to say that her room could not have been better than her company, so far.”