She's a friend of my mother's, and just after you and I went to town my mother got a note from her.

She had arrived in England (she usually lives abroad, though she has first and last spent a good deal of time here), and asked leave to come down for a few days.

She's a woman who can make such proposals with perfect confidence; she's so welcome wherever she goes.

And with my mother there could be no question of hesitating; she's the one person in the world whom my mother very much admires.

If she were not herself (which she after all much prefers), she would like to be Madame Merle.