The Ghost by Arnold Bennet Chapter 8 Page 20

“By the way, that is her half-sister, Marie Deschamps, who sings in your cousin’s operas at the London Diana.”

“I have made the acquaintance of Marie — a harmless little thing!”

“Her half-sister isn’t quite so harmless. She is the daughter of a Spanish mother, while Marie is the daughter of an English mother, a Cockney woman. As to Carlotta, when I was younger” — oh, the deliciously aged air with which this creature of twenty-three referred to her youth — ”I was singing at the Op�ra Comique in Paris, where Carlotta was starring, and I had the misfortune to arouse her jealousy. She is frightfully jealous, and get worse as she gets older. She swore to me that if I ever dared to appear at the Comique again she would have