"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.