would have happened; the air might have cleared as it clears after a
storm; I should have learnt where I stood. But I was afraid of the
knowledge. Light in these dark places might reveal an abyss at my feet.
I wanted to let things slide.

My aunt had returned to her accounts, the accounts which were the
cog-wheels that kept running the smooth course of the Etchingham
estates. She seemed to wish to indicate that I counted for not very much
in the scheme of things as she saw it.

"I should like to make your better acquaintance," she said, with her
head still averted, "there are reasons...." It came suddenly into my
head that she had an idea of testamentary dispositions, that she felt
she was breaking up, that I had my rights. I didn't much care for the
thing, but the idea of being the heir of Etchingham was--well, was an
idea. It would make me more possible to my pseudo-sister. It would be,
as it were, a starting-point, would make me potentially a somebody of
her sort of ideal. Moreover, I should be under the same roof, near her,
with her sometimes. One asks so little more than that, that it seemed
almost half the battle. I began to consider phrases of thanks and
acceptance and then uttered them.

I never quite understood the bearings of that scene; never quite whether
my aunt really knew that my sister was not my sister. She was a
wonderfully clever woman of the unscrupulous order, with a _sang-froid_
and self-possession well calculated to let her cut short any
inconvenient revelations. It was as if she had had long practice in the
art, though I cannot say what occasion she can have had for its
practice--perhaps for the confounding of wavering avowers of Dissent at
home.