I found myself falling into the error of thinking of her too
as one of Jeffrey Aspern's contemporaries; this came from her
having so little in common with my own. It was possible,
I said to myself, that she had not even heard of him;
it might very well be that Juliana had not cared to lift even
for her the veil that covered the temple of her youth. In this
case she perhaps would not know of the existence of the papers,
and I welcomed that presumption--it made me feel more safe with her--
until I remembered that we had believed the letter of disavowal
received by Cumnor to be in the handwriting of the niece.
If it had been dictated to her she had of course to know what it
was about; yet after all the effect of it was to repudiate
the idea of any connection with the poet. I held it probable
at all events that Miss Tita had not read a word of his poetry.
Moreover if, with her companion, she had always escaped
the interviewer there was little occasion for her having
got it into her head that people were "after" the letters.
People had not been after them, inasmuch as they had not
heard of them; and Cumnor's fruitless feeler would have been
a solitary accident.

When midnight sounded Miss Tita got up; but she stopped at the door
of the house only after she had wandered two or three times
with me round the garden. "When shall I see you again?"
I asked before she went in; to which she replied with
promptness that she should like to come out the next night.
She added however that she should not come--she was so far
from doing everything she liked.

"You might do a few things that _I_ like," I said with a sigh.