“Understand what?”

“A hint of something foreign⁠—different⁠—that there has always been about you.”

“My mother was very beautiful, I believe. I don’t know, because I never saw her. She died when I was quite a little child. I believe there was some tragedy connected with her death⁠—she took an overdose of some sleeping draught by mistake. However that may be, my father was brokenhearted. Shortly afterwards, he went into the Consular Service. Everywhere he went, I went with him. When I was twenty-three, I had been nearly all over the world. It was a splendid life⁠—I loved it.”

There was a smile on her face, and her head was thrown back. She seemed living in the memory of those old glad days.