She herself had suggested her being sheltered under my aunt's roof as a singularly welcome "paying guest." She herself, too, had suggested the visit to Paris and had hired the house from a degenerate Duc de Luynes who preferred the delights of an _appartement_ in the less lugubrious Avenue Marceau.
"We have tastes so much in common," my aunt explained, as she moved away to welcome a new arrival.

I was left alone with the woman who called herself my sister.
We stood a little apart.

Each little group of talkers in the vast room seemed to stand just without earshot of the next.

I had my back to the door, my face to her.
"And so you have come," she said, maliciously it seemed to me.
It was impossible to speak in _such_ a position; in such a place; impossible to hold a discussion on family affairs when a diminutive Irishwoman with too mobile eyebrows, and a couple of gigantic, raw-boned, lugubrious Spaniards, were in a position to hear anything that one uttered above a whisper.

One might want to raise one's voice.
Besides, she was so--so terrible; there was no knowing what she might not say.