We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard.
It isn't as though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives.

She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about being his sister, and all that." "I don't see that it was nonsense at all." "Yes, it was nonsense,--on such an occasion.

If a man asks a girl to marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister.
I think it is nonsense.

If she would only consider about it properly she would soon learn to love him." "That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any tutor." "You won't do anything to help me then ?" "I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you.

And, to tell the truth, I must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better say to Bell about it.