He could not help sighing his relief.
And, after meticulously washing-up and straightening, she departed, and Priam remained solitary with his ideas about married life and the fiscal question.
Alice was assuredly the very mirror of discretion.

Never, since that unanswered query as to savings at the Grand Babylon, had she subjected him to any inquisition concerning money.

Never had she talked of her own means, save in casual phrase now and then to assure him that there was enough.

She had indeed refused banknotes diffidently offered to her by him, telling him to keep them by him till need of them arose.

Never had she discoursed of her own past life, nor led him on to discourse of his.
She was one of those women for whom neither the past nor the future seems to exist--they are always so occupied with the important present.
He and she had both of them relied on their judgment of character as regarded each other's worthiness and trustworthiness.