And I should not be thanked if I interfered. This skeleton of swift
reasoning passed between word and word ... "You are no sister of mine!"
I was continuing my sentence quite amiably.

Her face brightened to greet someone approaching behind me.

"Did you hear him?" she said. "_Did_ you hear him, Mr. Churchill. He
casts off--he disowns me. Isn't he a stern brother? And the quarrel is
about nothing." The impudence--or the presence of mind of
it--overwhelmed me.

Churchill smiled pleasantly.

"Oh--one always quarrels about nothing," Churchill answered. He spoke a
few words to her; about my aunt; about the way her machine ran--that
sort of thing. He behaved toward her as if she were an indulged child,
impertinent with licence and welcome enough. He himself looked rather
like the short-sighted, but indulgent and very meagre lion that peers at
the unicorn across a plum-cake.

"So you are going back to Paris," he said. "Miss Churchill will be
sorry. And you are going to continue to--to break up the universe?"

"Oh, yes," she answered, "we are going on with that, my aunt would never
give it up. She couldn't, you know."

"You'll get into trouble," Churchill said, as if he were talking to a
child intent on stealing apples. "And when is our turn coming? You're
going to restore the Stuarts, aren't you?" It was his idea of badinage,
amiable without consequence.