Then he said, with a meditative look and a very calm, retrospective voice, that he was once very much in love with a native girl in India, and might have become permanently devoted to her, were it not for the accident of his being ordered back to England summarily.
This was a piece of news which cut two ways.

In the first place it lessened the extraordinary character of Frank's marriage, and it roused in her an immediate curiosity--which a woman always feels in the past "affairs" of her lover, or possible lover.

Vidall did not take pains to impress her with the fact that the matter occurred when he was almost a boy; and it was when her earnest inquisition had drawn from him, bit by bit, the circumstances of the case, and she had forgotten many parts of her commination service and to preserve an effective neutrality in tone, that she became aware he was speaking ancient history.

Then it was too late to draw back.
They had threaded their way through the crowd into the conservatory, where they were quite alone, and there, with only a little pyramid of hydrangeas between them, which she could not help but notice chimed well with the colour of her dress, he dropped his voice a little lower, and then suddenly said, his eyes hard on her: "I want your permission to go to Greyhope." The tone drew her eyes hastily to his, and, seeing, she dropped them again.

Vidall had a strong will, and, what is of more consequence, a peculiarly attractive voice.