“They’ve got things to talk about.”

“Why, yes,” I answered; “I suppose the railway matter has to be settled.”  She looked at me fixedly.

“You—­you mustn’t talk,” she warned.

“Oh,” I answered, “I’m not indiscreet—­not essentially.”

The other three were somewhat tardy in making their drawing-room appearance.  I had a sense of them, leaning their heads together over the edges of the table.  In the interim a rather fierce political dowager convoyed two well-controlled, blond daughters into the room.  There was a continual coming and going of such people in the house; they did with Miss Churchill social business of some kind, arranged electoral raree-shows, and what not; troubled me very little.  On this occasion the blond daughters were types of the sixties’ survivals—­the type that unemotionally inspected albums.  I was convoying them through a volume of views of Switzerland, the dowager was saying to Miss Churchill: 

“You think, then, it will be enough if we have....”  When the door opened behind my back.  I looked round negligently and hastily returned to the consideration of a shining photograph of the Dent du Midi.  A very gracious figure of a girl was embracing the grim Miss Churchill, as a gracious girl should virginally salute a grim veteran.

“Ah, my dear Miss Churchill!” a fluting voice filled the large room, “we were very nearly going back to Paris without once coming to see you.  We are only over for two days—­for the Tenants’ Ball, and so my aunt ... but surely that is Arthur....”

I turned eagerly.  It was the Dimensionist girl.  She continued talking to Miss Churchill.  “We meet so seldom, and we are never upon terms,” she said lightly.  “I assure you we are like cat and dog.”  She came toward me and the blond maidens disappeared, everybody, everything disappeared.  I had not seen her for nearly a year.  I had vaguely gathered from Miss Churchill that she was regarded as a sister of mine, that she had, with wealth inherited from a semi-fabulous Australian uncle, revived the glories of my aunt’s house.  I had never denied it, because I did not want to interfere with my aunt’s attempts to regain some of the family’s prosperity.  It even had my sympathy to a small extent, for, after all, the family was my family too.

As a memory my pseudo-sister had been something bright and clear-cut and rather small; seen now, she was something that one could not look at for glow.  She moved toward me, smiling and radiant, as a ship moves beneath towers of shining canvas.  I was simply overwhelmed.  I don’t know what she said, what I said, what she did or I. I have an idea that we conversed for some minutes.  I remember that she said, at some point,

“Go away now; I want to talk to Mr. Gurnard.”

As a matter of fact, Gurnard was making toward her—­a deliberate, slow progress.  She greeted him with nonchalance, as, beneath eyes, a woman greets a man she knows intimately.  I found myself hating him, thinking that he was not the sort of man she ought to know.