, set on their feet, or
exported to my patient land. And he would do it quite inarticulately,
set in motion by seeing a child crying in the street. He would wrestle
with dictionaries, in that unfamiliar tongue.... Well, he could not bear
to see a child cry. Perhaps he could not bear to see a woman and not
give her the comfort of his physical attractions. But, although I liked
him so intensely, I was rather apt to take these things for granted.
They made me feel comfortable with him, good towards him; they made me
trust him. But I guess I thought it was part of the character of any
English gentleman. Why, one day he got it into his head that the head
waiter at the Excelsior had been crying--the fellow with the grey
face and grey whiskers. And then he spent the best part of a week, in
correspondence and up at the British consul's, in getting the fellow's
wife to come back from London and bring back his girl baby. She had
bolted with a Swiss scullion. If she had not come inside the week he
would have gone to London himself to fetch her. He was like that. Edward
Ashburnham was like that, and I thought it was only the duty of his rank
and station. Perhaps that was all that it was--but I pray God to make
me discharge mine as well. And, but for the poor girl, I daresay that I
should never have seen it, however much the feeling might have been over
me. She had for him such enthusiasm that, although even now I do not
understand the technicalities of English life, I can gather enough. She
was with them during the whole of our last stay at Nauheim.

Nancy Rufford was her name; she was Leonora's only friend's only child,
and Leonora was her guardian, if that is the correct term. She had lived
with the Ashburnhams ever since she had been of the age of thirteen,
when her mother was said to have committed suicide owing to the
brutalities of her father. Yes, it is a cheerful story.... Edward always
called her "the girl", and it was very pretty, the evident affection
he had for her and she for him. And Leonora's feet she would have
kissed--those two were for her the best man and the best woman on
earth--and in heaven. I think that she had not a thought of evil in her
head--the poor girl....

Well, anyhow, she chanted Edward's praises to me for the hour together,
but, as I have said, I could not make much of it. It appeared that he
had the D.S.O., and that his troop loved him beyond the love of men.
You never saw such a troop as his. An