"Well, you were here often enough to know it," she said abruptly.

"Daphne, Mrs.Fairmile is a distant cousin of ours." "Distant, but quite enough to swear by!" said the visitor, gaily.

"Yes, Mrs.Barnes, I knew this house very well in old days.

It has many charming points." She looked round with a face that had suddenly become coolly critical, an embodied intelligence.
Daphne, as though divining for the first time a listener worthy of her steel, began to talk with some rapidity of the changes she wished to make.

She talked with an evident desire to show off, to make an impression.