“Your poor, dear father was precious badly off then,” he said; “he had a hard struggle for it.  I had a bad time of it too; worm had got at all my plantations, so I couldn’t help him, poor chap.  I think, mind you, Kenny Granger treated him very badly.  He might have done something for him—­he had influence, Kenny had.”

Kenny was my uncle, the head of the family, the husband of my aunt.

“They weren’t on terms,” I said.

“Oh, I know, I know,” the old man mumbled, “but still, for one’s only brother ...  However, you contrive to do yourselves pretty well.  You’re making your pile, aren’t you?  Someone said to me the other day—­can’t remember who it was—­that you were quite one of the rising men—­quite one of the men.”

“Very kind of someone,” I said.

“And now I see,” he went on, lifting up a copy of a morning paper, over which I had found him munching his salmon cutlet, “now I see your sister is going to marry a cabinet minister.  Ah!” he shook his poor, muddled, baked head, “I remember you both as tiny little dots.”

“Why,” I said, “she can hardly have been born then.”

“Oh, yes,” he affirmed, “that was when I came over in ’78.  She remembered, too, that I brought her over an ivory doll—­she remembered.”

“You have seen her?” I asked.

“Oh, I called two or three weeks—­no, months—­ago.  She’s the image of your poor, dear mother,” he added, “at that age; I remarked upon it to your aunt, but, of course, she could not remember.  They were not married until after the quarrel.”

A sudden restlessness made me bolt the rest of my tepid dinner.  With my return to the upper world, and the return to me of a will, despair of a sort had come back.  I had before me the problem—­the necessity—­of winning her.  Once I was out of contact with her she grew smaller, less of an idea, more of a person—­that one could win.  And there were two ways.  I must either woo her as one woos a person barred; must compel her to take flight, to abandon, to cast away everything; or I must go to her as an eligible suitor with the Etchingham acres and possibilities of a future on that basis.  This fantastic old man with his mumbled reminiscences spoilt me for the last.  One remembers sooner or later that a county-man may not marry his reputed sister without scandal.  And I craved her intensely.

She had upon me the effect of an incredible stimulant; away from her I was like a drunkard cut off from his liquor; an opium-taker from his drug.  I hardly existed; I hardly thought.

I had an errand at my aunt’s house; had a message to deliver, sympathetic enquiries to make—­and I wanted to see her, to gain some sort of information from her; to spy out the land; to ask her for terms.  There was a change in the appearance of the house, an adventitious brightness that indicated the rise in the fortunes of the family.  For me the house was empty and the great door closed hollowly behind me.  My sister was not at home.  It seemed abominable to me that she should be out; that she could be talking to anyone, or could exist without me.  I went sullenly across the road to the palings of the square.  As I turned the corner I found my head pivoting on my neck.  I was looking over my shoulder at the face of the house, was wondering which was her window.