"Oh, we don't correspond," I said light-heartedly, "we are _so_ different." I wanted to take a rise out of the creeping animal that he was. He confronted her blandly. "You must be the little girl that I remember," he said. He had known my parents ages ago. That, indeed, was how I came to know him; I wouldn't have chosen him for a friend. "I thought Granger said you were dead ... but one gets confused...." "Oh, we see very little of each other," she answered. "Arthur might have said I was dead--he's capable of anything, you know." She spoke with an assumption of sisterly indifference that was absolutely striking. I began to think she must be an actress of genius, she did it so well. She _was_ the sister who had remained within the pale; I, the rapscallion of a brother whose vagaries were trying to his relations. That was the note she struck, and she maintained it. I didn't know what the deuce she was driving at, and I didn't care. These scenes with a touch of madness appealed to me. I was going to live, and here, apparently, was a woman ready to my hand. Besides, she was making a fool of Callan, and that pleased me. His patronising manners had irritated me. I assisted rather silently. They began to talk of mutual acquaintances--as one talks. They both seemed to know everyone in this world. She gave herself the airs of being quite in the inner ring; alleged familiarity with quite impossible persons, with my portentous aunt, with Cabinet Ministers--that sort of people. They talked about them--she, as if she lived among them; he, as if he tried very hard to live up to them.