Her dignified exit had been no more convincing to him than to Bisbee.
He went back over the past and recalled all he knew of the woman whose daughter he had married.

She had visited the United States about twenty-one years ago, met and married Delano, and remained in San Francisco two or three months on their way to Japan.

Delano had died on the voyage across the Pacific, been buried at sea, and his widow had returned to her family in Rouen and settled down in her brother's household.
This was practically all he knew, for it was all that Helene knew, and Madame Delano never wasted words.

It had not occurred to him to question her.

Their status in Rouen was established, and if not distinguished it was indubitably respectable and not remotely suggestive of mystery.
Price, convinced that Helene's father must have been a gentleman, recalled that he had asked her one day to tell him something of the Delanos, but his wife had replied vaguely that she believed her mother had been too sad to talk about him for a long while, and then probably had got out of the habit.