"What about?"

"I must explain to you. It's difficult to say. We have written to each other for a long time. She wrote first about my work—she liked it—and then somehow we began to correspond regularly.... She doesn't know that we're related; I haven't spoken of you—I didn't know she had ever seen you."

"I don't understand. I've spoken of you: she didn't say she knew you. Why did she make a secret of it?"

"I can't think why."

"Have you ever met her?"

"Yes."

"It's the most extraordinary——Where?"

"She was in the country this summer with her sister."

"Bee?"

"Yes, 'Bee.' I went down there. That was after she sent me the likeness. I wanted to see her. I had rooms in the same house for a few days."