"'It is a fact,' I said. 'I have been brought up in a genteel position and I don't consider the whole business to amount to a heap of beans.'
"I could hear him walking to and fro, and presently, as my eyes grew accustomed, I made him out, a tall phantom moving in front of other motionless phantoms. I became aware, too, of a warmth coming from that quarter and saw him stoop and open the damper of a closed stove, a studio stove, I think it was.
"'Then what can it matter to you what her parents were?' he demanded, straightening up and coming into the light.
"'I didn't say I wasn't respectable,' I told him, 'as well as curious. Anybody would be that.'
"He admitted that was so, and came and sat down.
"'The girl was born at sea, on a ship,' he observed slowly.
"'Well,' I said, 'what of that? So was I.'
"'Oh, is that so?' He looked at me again in his nervous way. Lit a cigarette and contemplated the smoke.
"'Born at sea, on a ship,' he repeated. 'Her mother came from somewhere up the Adriatic coast, Loreto, if I remember rightly. A lady's maid. She and her mistress joined the mail-boat at Port Said. They had been living at Cairo. On the voyage she died in giving birth to a child. There was some trouble, which I never fathomed, about the mistress, the Honourable Mrs. James. She did not know her maid was married when she engaged her at Venice. Letters were found in her pockets from a Sergeant Cairola. Just about this time the Italian Army was severely defeated in Abyssinia, and as far as could be ascertained the sergeant, who had married the girl at Ancona on the very point of embarking, was killed. Mrs. James was not in a condition, nor was she, I imagine, of a temperament to interest herself in the case. The girl, of course, was buried at sea, several days before we arrived here. As the vessel was British, the disposal of an Italian child was complicated. Not born on Italian soil, she was not eligible for the state institutions for orphans. I really forget the details. I had to make a declaration, of course, being the surgeon, but the captain and purser saw the authorities. On our return voyage we learned that they had found foster parents for the child, who received a grant out of the pension due to the widow had she lived. Since then, on only one occasion, a very painful one for me, I may say, have I had anything to do with the case.'
"So that I was really no forrader than before, you see. Rosa herself had told me about all of importance that was known. She had been a baby at Rebecca's, then a little girl and then a big girl. And the story, though Rosa had no part in it, the story spread. I had seen around the corner, and there were so many things I wanted to know! Things I had no right to know, come to that, if I was a gentleman. No right to ask anyway. I got up to go.