“Of course,” I answered, trying to suppress my enthusiasm. “She’s charming.”
“A splendid pianist, too.”
“Excellent.”
“It has always been a wonder to me that she has never become engaged,” he remarked. “A girl with her personal charms ought to make an excellent match.”
“Has she never been engaged?” I inquired quickly, eager to learn the truth about her from this man, who was evidently an old friend of the family.
“Never actually engaged. There have been one or two little love-affairs, I’ve heard, but none of them was really serious.”
“He’d be a lucky fellow who married her,” I remarked, still striving to conceal the intense interest I felt.
“Lucky!” he echoed. “I should rather think so, in many ways. It is impossible for a girl of her beauty and nobility of character to go about without lots of fellows falling in love with her. Yet I happen to know that she holds them all aloof, without even a flirtation.”
I smiled at this assertion of his, and congratulated myself that I was the only exception; for had she not expressed pleasure at my companionship on her walks? But recollecting her admission that the victim of the assassin’s knife had been her lover, I returned to the subject, in order to learn further facts.
“Who were the men with whom she had the minor love-affairs—any one I know?” I inquired.