"He is engaged to her."

Mr. Thorne breathed his astonishment in a low whistle. "You don't like it?"
he surmised at once.

"Like it! If it were merely a question of liking! She is impossible. She
knows it, her people know it, and they have not told him. It remains"--

"What is the girl's name?"

"Henry, she is not a girl! That is, she is a girl forced into premature
womanhood, like all the fruits of this hotbed climate. She is that Miss
Benedet whom you helped, whom you saved--how many years ago? When Willy was
a schoolboy."

"Well, she _was_ saved, presumably."

"Saved from what, and by a total stranger!"

"She made no mistake in selecting the stranger. I can testify to that; and
she was as young as he, my dear."

"A girl is never as young as a boy of the same age. She is a woman now, and
she has taken his all--everything a man can give to his first--and told him
nothing!"

"Are you sure it's the same girl? There are other Benedets."

"She is the one. His letter fixes it beyond a question--so innocently he
fastens her past upon her! And he says, 'She is "a woman like a dewdrop."'