English life, I can gather enough. She was with them during the
whole of our last stay at Nauheim.

Nancy Rufford was her name; she was Leonora's only friend's only
child, and Leonora was her guardian, if that is the correct term.
She had lived with the Ashburnhams ever since she had been of
the age of thirteen, when her mother was said to have committed
suicide owing to the brutalities of her father. Yes, it is a cheerful
story. . . . Edward always called her "the girl", and it was very
pretty, the evident affection he had for her and she for him. And
Leonora's feet she would have kissed--those two were for her the
best man and the best woman on earth--and in heaven. I think that
she had not a thought of evil in her head--the poor girl. . . .

Well, anyhow, she chanted Edward's praises to me for the hour
together, but, as I have said, I could not make much of it. It
appeared that he had the D.S.O., and that his troop loved him
beyond the love of men. You never saw such a troop as his. And
he had the Royal Humane Society's medal with a clasp. That
meant, apparently, that he had twice jumped off the deck of a
troopship to rescue what the girl called "Tommies", who had fallen
overboard in the Red Sea and such places. He had been twice
recommended for the V.C., whatever that might mean, and,
although owing to some technicalities he had never received that
apparently coveted order, he had some special place about his
sovereign at the coronation. Or perhaps it was some post in the
Beefeaters'. She made him out like a cross between Lohengrin and
the Chevalier Bayard. Perhaps he was. . . . But he was too silent a
fellow to make that side of him really decorative. I remember
going to him at about that time and asking him what the D.S.O.