"Just fifteen years. I was going to Harrow when she came as a young girl to stay with my mother. Her people and my people had known each other for the last fifty years. Since that I have seen her constantly, and of course we are very intimate."
"I suppose so."
"I know as much about her after all that as if we had lived in two different hemispheres and couldn't speak a word of each other's language. There isn't a thought or a feeling in common between us. I ask after her husband and her children, and then tell her it's going to rain. She says something about the old General's health, and then there is an end of everything between us. When next we meet we do it all over again."
"How very uninteresting!" said Ayala.
"Very uninteresting. It is because there are so many Mrs. Gregorys about that I like to go down to Drumcaller and live by myself. Perhaps you're a Mrs. Gregory to somebody."
"Why should I be a Mrs. Gregory? I don't think I am at all like Mrs. Gregory."
"Not to me, Ayala." Now she heard the "Ayala," and felt something of what it meant. There had been moments at which she had almost disliked to hear him call her Miss Dormer; but now,—now she wished that he had not called her Ayala. She strove to assume a serious expression of face, but having done so she could not dare to turn it up towards him. The glance of her little anger, if there was any, fell only upon the ground. "It is because you are to me a creature so essentially different from Mrs. Gregory that I seem to know you so well. I never want to go to Drumcaller if you are near me;—or, if I think of Drumcaller, it is that I might be there with you."
"I am sure the place is very pretty, but I don't suppose I shall ever see it."
"Do you know about your sister and Mr. Hamel?"
"Yes," said Ayala, surprised. "She has told me all about it. How do you know?"