"A personal matter ," she says, after a moment - not an awkward pause, when she's so comfortable where she is, but a moment of decision. It isn't hers to confide, for all that she carries her own lingering tensions from it. "Of Dorian's - I was...made aware, and so I accompanied him."

She weighs it a moment, how to say what she might say -

"It is the thing to do," almost as if she's testing the idea, "as his friend."