"No, no; it isn't that," said Miss Tita, turning on me
a somewhat troubled face. "I don't know how to say it:
it's on account of something--ages ago, before I was born--
in her life."

"Something? What sort of thing?" I asked as if I myself could
have no idea.

"Oh, she has never told me," Miss Tita answered; and I was sure
she was speaking the truth.

Her extreme limpidity was almost provoking, and I felt for the moment
that she would have been more satisfactory if she had been less ingenuous.
"Do you suppose it's something to which Jeffrey Aspern's letters and papers--
I mean the things in her possession--have reference?"

"I daresay it is!" my companion exclaimed as if this were a very
happy suggestion. "I have never looked at any of those things."

"None of them? Then how do you know what they are?"

"I don't," said Miss Tita placidly. "I have never had them in my hands.
But I have seen them when she has had them out."

"Does she have them out often?"

"Not now, but she used to. She is very fond of them."

"In spite of their being compromising?"