Chapter Three.

Chapter Three.“It is Really Ella.”“What shall we do? What can be the matter?” said Madelene, when after an instant’s silence she began to take in the fact of Ella’s arrival.“Receive her cordially of course. What else in Heaven’s name can you do?” Sir Philip replied with a touch of impatience. “After all there is nothing so extraordinary in a girl’s coming to her own father’s house—even taking refuge there if, as is possible—”“She has been turned out of her aunt’s,” interrupted Ermine. “Yes, I’m certain that’s it—she and old Burton have come to blows and Ella’s high spirits or high temper have proved too much for him.”“Ermine,” said Philip, warningly, “you should really,” and he glanced in Barnes’s direction.But if Barnes did hear what they were saying he at least appeared so absolutely unconscious that Philip’s remonstrance fell rather flat. The butler had retired to a few paces distance, where he stood awaiting orders with an irreproachably blank expression.“Is the young—is Miss Ella St Quentin in the library?” asked Sir Philip suddenly.“Yes, my—I beg pardon—yes, Sir Philip,” Barnes replied. His former master had been a peer, and even after some years of serving a commoner Barnes found it difficult to ignore the old habit.“Then go and tell her Miss St Quentin; mind you, say it distinctly, no Miss Madelene or Miss Ermine—the young lady is, as you supposed, Miss Ella St Quentin—say that Miss St Quentin will be with her immediately. You’d better go at once, Maddie.”“She couldn’t have meant to call herself Miss St Quentin—it was just an accident, no doubt,” said Madelene nervously.“Of course, but it’s just as well from the first to remind her that she isnotMiss St Quentin,” said Philip. “Stupid of her aunt to have let her get into the habit. But Madelene—”“Yes, yes. Ermine, hadn’t you better get some fresh tea?—this will be cold,” said Madelene, touching the teapot. “Philip, hadn’t Ermine better come too?”No one could have believed it of her—no one ever did believe it possible that the cold, stately Madelene was in reality a martyr to shyness and timidity. But the two or three who knew her well, knew the fact and pitied her intensely, her cousin Philip among them. But he knew, too, the best way to treat it, cruel as it sometimes seemed.“No,” he said, “decidedly not. You will get on much better alone, Maddie. Off with you, there’s a good girl. And good-bye. I’m going round to the stable-yard and I’ll mount there. I’m dying with curiosity, but all the same I’m too high-principled to indulge it. It wouldn’t do for me to stay—you and Ermine are quite enough for the poor child to face at first.”“Oh, Philip,” said Madelene, stopping short again, for by this time she had got a few yards on her way, “I thought you would have stayed to help us.”“Not I,” Philip called after her. “It’s much better not, I assure you. I’ll look in to-morrow to see how you’re all getting on, and to hear the whole story. And if I meet Uncle Marcus on his way home, as I dare say I shall, I’ll tell him of the arrival, so as to save you having to break it to him.”“And do beg him to come home as quickly as he can,” replied Madelene.Philip got up from his seat and moved to go.“Good-bye, Ermine,” he said.Ermine looked at him dubiously.“Are you in earnest, Philip?” she said. “I have more than half an idea that you are going off out of cowardice, and—and—that all your regard for Ella’s feelings, etc, is—”“What?” said Philip, smiling.“Talk,” Ermine replied curtly.Philip laughed.“No, truly,” he said. “All things considered it is much better for me to leave you. And it’s quite true about my curiosity. I’m awfully curious both to hear about it all and to see this little personage who has descended among us in this thunder-and-lightning, bomb-shell sort of way. By Jove—” and he stopped short, while a different expression came into his face—“what a nuisance it is to think that all our jolly times together are over! I was grumbling at it prospectively this morning—to think that it has already come to pass.”He sighed. Ermine sighed too.“Yes,” she said, “it is horrid. For I know—as positively as if I could hear what is at this moment passing in the library—that the child has come to stay.”“Oh Lord, yes,” Philip exclaimed, “not a doubt of it.”“I only wish shewerea child,” pursued Ermine. “It might be more of a bother in some ways, but in others—seventeen’s an awful sort of age—most girls then are really children and full of fancying themselves grown-up, and standing on their dignity, and all the rest of it, and yet not really grown-up enough to be proper companions to—”“Two full-fledged old maids like you and Maddie,” put in Philip.“Exactly,” said Ermine.“Well, good-bye again,” he said, lifting his hat as he turned away in the direction of the stables.Miss St Quentin made her way slowly to the house. She looked outwardly calm, indeed to look anything else had scarcely ever in her life occurred to Madelene, but inwardly she was greatly perturbed. To begin with, she was as I have said, a sufferer from intense shyness; shyness of that kind most painful and difficult to contend with, better perhaps defined as moral timidity, which shrinks with almost morbid horror from giving or witnessing pain or discomfort, which, but for the constraining and restraining force of a strong sense of duty, would any day gladly endure personal suffering or neglect, or allow wrong-doing to go unrebuked, rather than attempt the slightest remonstrance. Madelene could enter a roomful of strangers without a touch of nervousness, but the thought of reproving a servant would keep her awake for nights! and that something in the action of her young half-sister was about to call for rebuke or disapproval she felt instinctively certain. Then there were other reasons for her feeling far from able to meet Ella with the hearty welcome she would have wished; housekeeper’s considerations were on her mind!“I did so want to have the rooms arranged the way Ermine and I were planning,” she said to herself. “It would have been so much better to have begun regularly at once. Now I really don’t know what to do. Papa would certainly be displeased if I gave her one of the long corridor ones, and yet the two or three empty rooms in the south wing are so small and would seem shabby. But I am afraid there is nothing else to do. I must explain to her that the rooms intended for her can’t possibly be ready for some time. And about the maids too—we had planned it so well. Now, there will really be no one able to look after her, for I can’t trust Mélanie; she is so injudicious with that chattering tongue of hers.”Meantime, the cause of all these discussions was waiting alone in the library. She had seated herself when first shown in, in a matter-of-course, unrestrained manner, as if quite at her ease. But this had been for the benefit of Barnes and his subordinates. No sooner was she left alone, than the girl got up and strolled nervously towards the window, where she stood looking out. Now that the deed was done, her courage began to flag.“I wonder,” she said to herself, clasping her little hands together, “Iwonderwhat they’ll say. They surely can’t blame me, when I tell them how unendurable it was, and that even Aunt Phillis, in her heart, though she wouldn’t own it, wished I were gone, for I know she did. She’ll have got my telegram by now. How delighted old Burton will be—that’s the only bit of it I hate to think of! Still, staying there to spite him would have been quarrelling with my nose—is that it?—no, quarrelling with my face—oh bother, I can’t get it right, I do so wonder what they’ll all say here.”There was nothing to help her in what she saw outside—not a human being was in sight—only the lovely, perfectly kept grounds, looking perhaps at their very best in the soft mellowness of the summer afternoon.“How delightful it is here!” she thought next; “what a beautiful room, and what splendid books,” and her girlish heart swelled with satisfaction to think that here was her home, the spot on earth where she had an undoubted, an unquestionable right to be! “How poky auntie’s house would seem in comparison—and Mr Burton’s ‘mansion’ even worse, for any way there was nothing vulgar orparvenuabout our little house. Still—it does seem rather a shame that I should have been out of it all, all these years, I, that have just as good a right, as poor old Harvey used to tell me, to everything here as Madelene and Ermine. I do hope I shall be able to like them—of course I must not let myself be ‘put upon,’ but still—I consider they have kept the best of things to themselves hitherto and—oh I wish she’d be quick and come. I don’t want to seem nervous and yet Iam, horribly so.”She tapped her parasol on the floor, then she glanced furtively in a mirror to see how she was looking.“My hair’s rather rough,” she thought, “but otherwise I don’t think I look bad. I wish I didn’t seem quite so young—and, oh, I do wish I were a little taller!”She was small certainly, but as she was also slight and very well proportioned, this did not really detract from her—beauty, one could scarcely call it. Ella St Quentin was not beautiful; she was just exceedingly pretty. Her hair was brown, a shade lighter than Ermine’s perhaps, but dark in comparison with Madelene’s fair coils, and her eyes were hazel, lovely eyes, pathetic and merry by turns, as it suited their capricious little owner to make them, and her features were all charming. There were good points in this pretty face too, real sweetness in the curves of the mouth, frankness and honesty in the forehead and no lack of resolution in the chin—but the whole was the face of a child rather than a woman—a well-meaning, but fitful and undisciplined child, who had known little of life and its graver lessons, whom one would tremble to expose to the storms which, sooner or later, in one form or another, all must face. Yet there was latent strength too, if one looked more closely; it was a face to make one anxious but hopeful also.She was well but simply dressed. Save for the extreme neatness of everything about her, she would have looked a mere school-girl; but the sweeps of her grey draperies, the poise of her head, nay, the very fit of her gloves, at once removed her from any possibility of being relegated to the category of girlish hobbledehoys. She had not a trace of awkwardness about her; she had passed through all the stages of teeth-changing, hair “doing up,” skirts lengthening and such crises, as one to the manner born—awkwardness and Ella were not to be thought of in the same century.The door opening at last, Ella flashed round from the window—was it the door, or her fancy only? For now all seemed still again, no, yes—the handle was moving a very little—truth to tell, Madelene holding the outside knob, was making a last effort to screw up her courage so as to meet her young sister affectionately but with all her wits about her nevertheless.There was no drawing back now that she had begun to turn the handle, and with a sigh which Ella could not hear, Miss St Quentin came in. Ella gasped slightly—“how beautiful,” was her first thought, to be however instantly followed by a second, “but how cold, and how horribly stuck-up! No, I feel it already—I shall never like her.”But Madelene, pale and calm, was advancing across the room.“Ella?” she said, as if till that moment she had had some lingering doubt on the matter, “Ella—it is really you! What a surprise—no, I would not have known you again in the least. Tell me, there is nothing wrong? Nothing the matter with your aunt, I hope?”She had stooped to kiss the young girl as she spoke. It would be untrue to say that the kiss was a very affectionate one, but on the other hand there was no intentional coldness about it. But Ella was not of this opinion.“No, thank you,” she replied, after submitting to, though not in any wise returning, the sisterly embrace. “Aunt Phillis is quite well—at this moment she must be, I am afraid, rather upset, for she will have got my telegram. I sent her one from Weevilscoombe station when I arrived.”“And why should that upset her?” asked Madelene; “she asked you to telegraph your safe arrival, I suppose? But you didn’t travel alone?”“Yes, indeed I did,” said Ella with a slight laugh. It was a nervous laugh in reality, but to her sister it sounded hard and a little defiant. “I not only travelled alone, but I came off without any one knowing. In fact auntie would only know that Ihadleft her for good, when she got my telegram.”Miss St Quentin’s pale face flushed a little, then the momentary colour faded, leaving her paler than before. She sat down, and motioned to her sister to do the same.“I am very sorry, very, very sorry to hear this,” she said, nerving herself to speak. “Ella, I am afraid you have done very wrong, and foolishly. It is not using Mrs Robertson well after all her care of you—replacing a mother to you and giving you a home all these years. And—it is not a good beginning of your future life with us, to have done what we—what papa cannot approve of.”Ella half rose from the chair on which she had only that moment seated herself. Her eyes sparkled ominously, her face flushed too, but after a different fashion from Madelene’s.“I don’t know anything about your not approving, and as for papa—well at least he can tell me himself what he thinks. But as for Aunt Phillis—I am sorry if I have grieved her. I would not have done so if I could have helped it, but I don’t see that I could. It isn’t my fault that she is going to marry a vulgar, purse-proud old snob, who had already begun to cast up to me, yes, actually to cast up tome, the daughter of Colonel St Quentin of Coombesthorpe, what his wife-to-be had done for me and spent on me as if I were a charity-child! And that touches on the point of the whole. I am grateful to poor auntie for all her love and care,” and here the young, excited voice quivered a little, “but I don’t see that I need to be grateful to her for what you may call substantial things—she didn’tneedto give me a home, as you say, or to spend her money on me—and a good deal of what was spent was my own money, or at least papa’s, which is the same thing; she has told me so herself. I had my own home, just as you and Ermine have—I am papa’s daughter just as much as you two are, even though we hadn’t the same mother. Do you think now—in the name of common-sense—do you see that I should be grateful for being taken away from my own proper home, such a home asthis—for no reason at all that I can see except that auntie herself wished it.”Madelene’s face looked unspeakably pained.“It was your own mother’s wish,” she said, in a low voice.“So I have been told—but—do you think dead people’s wishes should be allowed to affect the welfare of the living to such an extent?” asked the child in her sharp downright fashion. “For I don’t. Still that’s not the point—it was done and we’ll take it for granted it was done for the best. But now it was coming to an end—old Burton wasn’t going to have any trouble about me—he’s never been asked and never will be to spend a penny upon me, except once when he paid a fly for me and quarrelled with the driver, and on my last birthday when he gave me averyshabby prayer-book—sham ivory backs, you know, the kind that splits off—and it was auntie’s own doing, so Idon’tsee that I could have been expected to put up with his rudeness.”“Had you done anything to irritate him?” asked Madelene.Ella opened her eyes in surprise.“Oh dear, yes,” she said, “heaps of things. I don’t suppose I ever did anything but irritate him. My very existence, at least my presence, in auntie’s household irritated him. I understand it all now,” she went on, speaking more and more naturally with the interest of the subject. “Don’t you see he didn’t know anything about us when he first made auntie’s acquaintance and began to think she’d just suit him for a wife, and he thought I was a homeless orphan, a poor dependent, and that he’d have to take me too. It was rather irritating, I’ll allow,” she continued, smiling to herself a little, “for he saw we’d never get on, and if he’d only been a little nicer when he found I wasn’t in his way, after all, we might have ‘parted friendly,’ as servants say. But he was thoroughly put out by me—Icouldn’thelp trying to annoy him. And last night it came to a sort of crisis—he said I was impertinent and other things he had no business to say to papa’s daughter, who is no relation ofhis, and at last he told auntie, poor auntie, that she must choose between him and me.”“And what did Mrs Robertson say?” asked Madelene.“She didn’t say much. Indeed I didn’t give her any opportunity. She had a headache this morning, no wonder, and didn’t come down. So I just packed up a few things and told the servants to say I’d gone out, and I went to the railway and—came off here.NaturallyI came here,” she repeated, her tone acquiring again a shade of defiance, in reality the veil of some unacknowledged misgiving.Madelene did not at once reply. She sat there, her eyes gazing out of the window before her, in what Ella thought a very aggravating way.“Do you not agree with me?” the younger sister asked after a moment’s silence. Shyness was unknown to Ella, as were hesitation and patience when she was much concerned about anything.Madelene turned round and looked at her.“She’s angry,” thought Ella. “It is not any other feeling that makes her look like that.” And she kept her own bright eyes fixed upon her sister, which did not add to Miss St Quentin’s composure.“Of course if you were obliged to goanywherein this—this strange sort of way, you did right to come here,” said Madelene quietly. “But that is not the question at all. Were you right to leave your aunt’s house as you have done? That is the thing.”“Yes,” said Ella coolly, “under the circumstances I think I was quite right.”“Without consulting papa, without talking it over with Mrs Robertson, without—without,” Miss St Quentin went on, a sudden sensation of something very like temper nerving her to say it—“without in the least considering our—Ermine’s and my—convenience?”Ella gazed at her in unfeigned surprise, for a moment or two she was too astonished to feel indignant.“I don’t understand you,” she said. “Is it usual for sisters to be upon such terms? Is a daughter expected to beg and apologise like a stranger, before getting leave to come home—home where she has a right to be, and from which she was banished without her wishes being consulted in the least?”“You were a baby,” said Madelene. “You could not have been consulted. And—well the thing was done and this hasnotbeen your home, and it is no use talking in that exaggerated, theatrical sort of way, Ella. I shall do my best, my very best,” and here there was a little tremor in her voice, “to make you happy and content with us, and so I know will Ermine, but I can’t say that in what you have done to-day I think you have acted wisely, or—or rightly. What papa will say about it I don’t know. I—I did not mean to put forward any inconvenience to myself, or ourselves, in any prominent way.”She had already regretted the allusion to her sister and herself that she had made. It was, she felt, both unwise and inconsistent with the resolution she had come to.Ella did not answer.“Will you come out for a little?” Madelene went on. “We have been having tea—Ermine and I and—and our cousin—on the lawn. You would like a cup of tea, would you not? I am afraid your room will not be ready yet. We have been making some changes, and the rooms we intend for you are to be papered and painted next week. In the meantime we must consider how best to arrange.”“I am sorry to give you so much trouble,” said Ella coldly. “I should have thought—it surely cannot be difficult for the third daughter to have a room just as you and Ermine have. But of course you are right—Iama stranger, and it is no good pretending I am not.”“That was not what I meant at all,” said Madelene. But again Ella made no reply.“I must take care what I say,” she was thinking to herself, “or I shall be called ‘exaggerated’ and ‘theatrical,’ again.”Madelene opened the window and stepped out. “Shall we go this way?” she said. “It is nearer than round by the front door.”Ella followed her.“I am to be a younger sister when it comes to questions of precedence and that kind of thing, it appears,” she thought. “But a stranger when it suits the rest of the family to consider me so.”There was something soothing however to her impressionable feelings in the beauty all around her; it was a really exquisite evening and the girl was quick to respond to all such influences.“How lovely!” she said impulsively.Madelene turned. There was a smile on her face, almost the first Ella had seen there; the quiet, somewhat impassive countenance seemed transfigured.“Yes,” she said, “itislovely. I am glad for you to see it again for the first time on a day like this, though to us, and I think you will agree with us when you have lived here long enough, Coombesthorpe has a charm of its own in every season.”Ella opened her lips to reply, but before she had time to do so, she caught sight of a figure hastening towards them over the lawn.“Oh,” said Madelene, “here is Ermine. Yes! Ermie,” she called out, before the new-comer was quite close to them, “it is she—it is really Ella.”

“What shall we do? What can be the matter?” said Madelene, when after an instant’s silence she began to take in the fact of Ella’s arrival.

“Receive her cordially of course. What else in Heaven’s name can you do?” Sir Philip replied with a touch of impatience. “After all there is nothing so extraordinary in a girl’s coming to her own father’s house—even taking refuge there if, as is possible—”

“She has been turned out of her aunt’s,” interrupted Ermine. “Yes, I’m certain that’s it—she and old Burton have come to blows and Ella’s high spirits or high temper have proved too much for him.”

“Ermine,” said Philip, warningly, “you should really,” and he glanced in Barnes’s direction.

But if Barnes did hear what they were saying he at least appeared so absolutely unconscious that Philip’s remonstrance fell rather flat. The butler had retired to a few paces distance, where he stood awaiting orders with an irreproachably blank expression.

“Is the young—is Miss Ella St Quentin in the library?” asked Sir Philip suddenly.

“Yes, my—I beg pardon—yes, Sir Philip,” Barnes replied. His former master had been a peer, and even after some years of serving a commoner Barnes found it difficult to ignore the old habit.

“Then go and tell her Miss St Quentin; mind you, say it distinctly, no Miss Madelene or Miss Ermine—the young lady is, as you supposed, Miss Ella St Quentin—say that Miss St Quentin will be with her immediately. You’d better go at once, Maddie.”

“She couldn’t have meant to call herself Miss St Quentin—it was just an accident, no doubt,” said Madelene nervously.

“Of course, but it’s just as well from the first to remind her that she isnotMiss St Quentin,” said Philip. “Stupid of her aunt to have let her get into the habit. But Madelene—”

“Yes, yes. Ermine, hadn’t you better get some fresh tea?—this will be cold,” said Madelene, touching the teapot. “Philip, hadn’t Ermine better come too?”

No one could have believed it of her—no one ever did believe it possible that the cold, stately Madelene was in reality a martyr to shyness and timidity. But the two or three who knew her well, knew the fact and pitied her intensely, her cousin Philip among them. But he knew, too, the best way to treat it, cruel as it sometimes seemed.

“No,” he said, “decidedly not. You will get on much better alone, Maddie. Off with you, there’s a good girl. And good-bye. I’m going round to the stable-yard and I’ll mount there. I’m dying with curiosity, but all the same I’m too high-principled to indulge it. It wouldn’t do for me to stay—you and Ermine are quite enough for the poor child to face at first.”

“Oh, Philip,” said Madelene, stopping short again, for by this time she had got a few yards on her way, “I thought you would have stayed to help us.”

“Not I,” Philip called after her. “It’s much better not, I assure you. I’ll look in to-morrow to see how you’re all getting on, and to hear the whole story. And if I meet Uncle Marcus on his way home, as I dare say I shall, I’ll tell him of the arrival, so as to save you having to break it to him.”

“And do beg him to come home as quickly as he can,” replied Madelene.

Philip got up from his seat and moved to go.

“Good-bye, Ermine,” he said.

Ermine looked at him dubiously.

“Are you in earnest, Philip?” she said. “I have more than half an idea that you are going off out of cowardice, and—and—that all your regard for Ella’s feelings, etc, is—”

“What?” said Philip, smiling.

“Talk,” Ermine replied curtly.

Philip laughed.

“No, truly,” he said. “All things considered it is much better for me to leave you. And it’s quite true about my curiosity. I’m awfully curious both to hear about it all and to see this little personage who has descended among us in this thunder-and-lightning, bomb-shell sort of way. By Jove—” and he stopped short, while a different expression came into his face—“what a nuisance it is to think that all our jolly times together are over! I was grumbling at it prospectively this morning—to think that it has already come to pass.”

He sighed. Ermine sighed too.

“Yes,” she said, “it is horrid. For I know—as positively as if I could hear what is at this moment passing in the library—that the child has come to stay.”

“Oh Lord, yes,” Philip exclaimed, “not a doubt of it.”

“I only wish shewerea child,” pursued Ermine. “It might be more of a bother in some ways, but in others—seventeen’s an awful sort of age—most girls then are really children and full of fancying themselves grown-up, and standing on their dignity, and all the rest of it, and yet not really grown-up enough to be proper companions to—”

“Two full-fledged old maids like you and Maddie,” put in Philip.

“Exactly,” said Ermine.

“Well, good-bye again,” he said, lifting his hat as he turned away in the direction of the stables.

Miss St Quentin made her way slowly to the house. She looked outwardly calm, indeed to look anything else had scarcely ever in her life occurred to Madelene, but inwardly she was greatly perturbed. To begin with, she was as I have said, a sufferer from intense shyness; shyness of that kind most painful and difficult to contend with, better perhaps defined as moral timidity, which shrinks with almost morbid horror from giving or witnessing pain or discomfort, which, but for the constraining and restraining force of a strong sense of duty, would any day gladly endure personal suffering or neglect, or allow wrong-doing to go unrebuked, rather than attempt the slightest remonstrance. Madelene could enter a roomful of strangers without a touch of nervousness, but the thought of reproving a servant would keep her awake for nights! and that something in the action of her young half-sister was about to call for rebuke or disapproval she felt instinctively certain. Then there were other reasons for her feeling far from able to meet Ella with the hearty welcome she would have wished; housekeeper’s considerations were on her mind!

“I did so want to have the rooms arranged the way Ermine and I were planning,” she said to herself. “It would have been so much better to have begun regularly at once. Now I really don’t know what to do. Papa would certainly be displeased if I gave her one of the long corridor ones, and yet the two or three empty rooms in the south wing are so small and would seem shabby. But I am afraid there is nothing else to do. I must explain to her that the rooms intended for her can’t possibly be ready for some time. And about the maids too—we had planned it so well. Now, there will really be no one able to look after her, for I can’t trust Mélanie; she is so injudicious with that chattering tongue of hers.”

Meantime, the cause of all these discussions was waiting alone in the library. She had seated herself when first shown in, in a matter-of-course, unrestrained manner, as if quite at her ease. But this had been for the benefit of Barnes and his subordinates. No sooner was she left alone, than the girl got up and strolled nervously towards the window, where she stood looking out. Now that the deed was done, her courage began to flag.

“I wonder,” she said to herself, clasping her little hands together, “Iwonderwhat they’ll say. They surely can’t blame me, when I tell them how unendurable it was, and that even Aunt Phillis, in her heart, though she wouldn’t own it, wished I were gone, for I know she did. She’ll have got my telegram by now. How delighted old Burton will be—that’s the only bit of it I hate to think of! Still, staying there to spite him would have been quarrelling with my nose—is that it?—no, quarrelling with my face—oh bother, I can’t get it right, I do so wonder what they’ll all say here.”

There was nothing to help her in what she saw outside—not a human being was in sight—only the lovely, perfectly kept grounds, looking perhaps at their very best in the soft mellowness of the summer afternoon.

“How delightful it is here!” she thought next; “what a beautiful room, and what splendid books,” and her girlish heart swelled with satisfaction to think that here was her home, the spot on earth where she had an undoubted, an unquestionable right to be! “How poky auntie’s house would seem in comparison—and Mr Burton’s ‘mansion’ even worse, for any way there was nothing vulgar orparvenuabout our little house. Still—it does seem rather a shame that I should have been out of it all, all these years, I, that have just as good a right, as poor old Harvey used to tell me, to everything here as Madelene and Ermine. I do hope I shall be able to like them—of course I must not let myself be ‘put upon,’ but still—I consider they have kept the best of things to themselves hitherto and—oh I wish she’d be quick and come. I don’t want to seem nervous and yet Iam, horribly so.”

She tapped her parasol on the floor, then she glanced furtively in a mirror to see how she was looking.

“My hair’s rather rough,” she thought, “but otherwise I don’t think I look bad. I wish I didn’t seem quite so young—and, oh, I do wish I were a little taller!”

She was small certainly, but as she was also slight and very well proportioned, this did not really detract from her—beauty, one could scarcely call it. Ella St Quentin was not beautiful; she was just exceedingly pretty. Her hair was brown, a shade lighter than Ermine’s perhaps, but dark in comparison with Madelene’s fair coils, and her eyes were hazel, lovely eyes, pathetic and merry by turns, as it suited their capricious little owner to make them, and her features were all charming. There were good points in this pretty face too, real sweetness in the curves of the mouth, frankness and honesty in the forehead and no lack of resolution in the chin—but the whole was the face of a child rather than a woman—a well-meaning, but fitful and undisciplined child, who had known little of life and its graver lessons, whom one would tremble to expose to the storms which, sooner or later, in one form or another, all must face. Yet there was latent strength too, if one looked more closely; it was a face to make one anxious but hopeful also.

She was well but simply dressed. Save for the extreme neatness of everything about her, she would have looked a mere school-girl; but the sweeps of her grey draperies, the poise of her head, nay, the very fit of her gloves, at once removed her from any possibility of being relegated to the category of girlish hobbledehoys. She had not a trace of awkwardness about her; she had passed through all the stages of teeth-changing, hair “doing up,” skirts lengthening and such crises, as one to the manner born—awkwardness and Ella were not to be thought of in the same century.

The door opening at last, Ella flashed round from the window—was it the door, or her fancy only? For now all seemed still again, no, yes—the handle was moving a very little—truth to tell, Madelene holding the outside knob, was making a last effort to screw up her courage so as to meet her young sister affectionately but with all her wits about her nevertheless.

There was no drawing back now that she had begun to turn the handle, and with a sigh which Ella could not hear, Miss St Quentin came in. Ella gasped slightly—“how beautiful,” was her first thought, to be however instantly followed by a second, “but how cold, and how horribly stuck-up! No, I feel it already—I shall never like her.”

But Madelene, pale and calm, was advancing across the room.

“Ella?” she said, as if till that moment she had had some lingering doubt on the matter, “Ella—it is really you! What a surprise—no, I would not have known you again in the least. Tell me, there is nothing wrong? Nothing the matter with your aunt, I hope?”

She had stooped to kiss the young girl as she spoke. It would be untrue to say that the kiss was a very affectionate one, but on the other hand there was no intentional coldness about it. But Ella was not of this opinion.

“No, thank you,” she replied, after submitting to, though not in any wise returning, the sisterly embrace. “Aunt Phillis is quite well—at this moment she must be, I am afraid, rather upset, for she will have got my telegram. I sent her one from Weevilscoombe station when I arrived.”

“And why should that upset her?” asked Madelene; “she asked you to telegraph your safe arrival, I suppose? But you didn’t travel alone?”

“Yes, indeed I did,” said Ella with a slight laugh. It was a nervous laugh in reality, but to her sister it sounded hard and a little defiant. “I not only travelled alone, but I came off without any one knowing. In fact auntie would only know that Ihadleft her for good, when she got my telegram.”

Miss St Quentin’s pale face flushed a little, then the momentary colour faded, leaving her paler than before. She sat down, and motioned to her sister to do the same.

“I am very sorry, very, very sorry to hear this,” she said, nerving herself to speak. “Ella, I am afraid you have done very wrong, and foolishly. It is not using Mrs Robertson well after all her care of you—replacing a mother to you and giving you a home all these years. And—it is not a good beginning of your future life with us, to have done what we—what papa cannot approve of.”

Ella half rose from the chair on which she had only that moment seated herself. Her eyes sparkled ominously, her face flushed too, but after a different fashion from Madelene’s.

“I don’t know anything about your not approving, and as for papa—well at least he can tell me himself what he thinks. But as for Aunt Phillis—I am sorry if I have grieved her. I would not have done so if I could have helped it, but I don’t see that I could. It isn’t my fault that she is going to marry a vulgar, purse-proud old snob, who had already begun to cast up to me, yes, actually to cast up tome, the daughter of Colonel St Quentin of Coombesthorpe, what his wife-to-be had done for me and spent on me as if I were a charity-child! And that touches on the point of the whole. I am grateful to poor auntie for all her love and care,” and here the young, excited voice quivered a little, “but I don’t see that I need to be grateful to her for what you may call substantial things—she didn’tneedto give me a home, as you say, or to spend her money on me—and a good deal of what was spent was my own money, or at least papa’s, which is the same thing; she has told me so herself. I had my own home, just as you and Ermine have—I am papa’s daughter just as much as you two are, even though we hadn’t the same mother. Do you think now—in the name of common-sense—do you see that I should be grateful for being taken away from my own proper home, such a home asthis—for no reason at all that I can see except that auntie herself wished it.”

Madelene’s face looked unspeakably pained.

“It was your own mother’s wish,” she said, in a low voice.

“So I have been told—but—do you think dead people’s wishes should be allowed to affect the welfare of the living to such an extent?” asked the child in her sharp downright fashion. “For I don’t. Still that’s not the point—it was done and we’ll take it for granted it was done for the best. But now it was coming to an end—old Burton wasn’t going to have any trouble about me—he’s never been asked and never will be to spend a penny upon me, except once when he paid a fly for me and quarrelled with the driver, and on my last birthday when he gave me averyshabby prayer-book—sham ivory backs, you know, the kind that splits off—and it was auntie’s own doing, so Idon’tsee that I could have been expected to put up with his rudeness.”

“Had you done anything to irritate him?” asked Madelene.

Ella opened her eyes in surprise.

“Oh dear, yes,” she said, “heaps of things. I don’t suppose I ever did anything but irritate him. My very existence, at least my presence, in auntie’s household irritated him. I understand it all now,” she went on, speaking more and more naturally with the interest of the subject. “Don’t you see he didn’t know anything about us when he first made auntie’s acquaintance and began to think she’d just suit him for a wife, and he thought I was a homeless orphan, a poor dependent, and that he’d have to take me too. It was rather irritating, I’ll allow,” she continued, smiling to herself a little, “for he saw we’d never get on, and if he’d only been a little nicer when he found I wasn’t in his way, after all, we might have ‘parted friendly,’ as servants say. But he was thoroughly put out by me—Icouldn’thelp trying to annoy him. And last night it came to a sort of crisis—he said I was impertinent and other things he had no business to say to papa’s daughter, who is no relation ofhis, and at last he told auntie, poor auntie, that she must choose between him and me.”

“And what did Mrs Robertson say?” asked Madelene.

“She didn’t say much. Indeed I didn’t give her any opportunity. She had a headache this morning, no wonder, and didn’t come down. So I just packed up a few things and told the servants to say I’d gone out, and I went to the railway and—came off here.NaturallyI came here,” she repeated, her tone acquiring again a shade of defiance, in reality the veil of some unacknowledged misgiving.

Madelene did not at once reply. She sat there, her eyes gazing out of the window before her, in what Ella thought a very aggravating way.

“Do you not agree with me?” the younger sister asked after a moment’s silence. Shyness was unknown to Ella, as were hesitation and patience when she was much concerned about anything.

Madelene turned round and looked at her.

“She’s angry,” thought Ella. “It is not any other feeling that makes her look like that.” And she kept her own bright eyes fixed upon her sister, which did not add to Miss St Quentin’s composure.

“Of course if you were obliged to goanywherein this—this strange sort of way, you did right to come here,” said Madelene quietly. “But that is not the question at all. Were you right to leave your aunt’s house as you have done? That is the thing.”

“Yes,” said Ella coolly, “under the circumstances I think I was quite right.”

“Without consulting papa, without talking it over with Mrs Robertson, without—without,” Miss St Quentin went on, a sudden sensation of something very like temper nerving her to say it—“without in the least considering our—Ermine’s and my—convenience?”

Ella gazed at her in unfeigned surprise, for a moment or two she was too astonished to feel indignant.

“I don’t understand you,” she said. “Is it usual for sisters to be upon such terms? Is a daughter expected to beg and apologise like a stranger, before getting leave to come home—home where she has a right to be, and from which she was banished without her wishes being consulted in the least?”

“You were a baby,” said Madelene. “You could not have been consulted. And—well the thing was done and this hasnotbeen your home, and it is no use talking in that exaggerated, theatrical sort of way, Ella. I shall do my best, my very best,” and here there was a little tremor in her voice, “to make you happy and content with us, and so I know will Ermine, but I can’t say that in what you have done to-day I think you have acted wisely, or—or rightly. What papa will say about it I don’t know. I—I did not mean to put forward any inconvenience to myself, or ourselves, in any prominent way.”

She had already regretted the allusion to her sister and herself that she had made. It was, she felt, both unwise and inconsistent with the resolution she had come to.

Ella did not answer.

“Will you come out for a little?” Madelene went on. “We have been having tea—Ermine and I and—and our cousin—on the lawn. You would like a cup of tea, would you not? I am afraid your room will not be ready yet. We have been making some changes, and the rooms we intend for you are to be papered and painted next week. In the meantime we must consider how best to arrange.”

“I am sorry to give you so much trouble,” said Ella coldly. “I should have thought—it surely cannot be difficult for the third daughter to have a room just as you and Ermine have. But of course you are right—Iama stranger, and it is no good pretending I am not.”

“That was not what I meant at all,” said Madelene. But again Ella made no reply.

“I must take care what I say,” she was thinking to herself, “or I shall be called ‘exaggerated’ and ‘theatrical,’ again.”

Madelene opened the window and stepped out. “Shall we go this way?” she said. “It is nearer than round by the front door.”

Ella followed her.

“I am to be a younger sister when it comes to questions of precedence and that kind of thing, it appears,” she thought. “But a stranger when it suits the rest of the family to consider me so.”

There was something soothing however to her impressionable feelings in the beauty all around her; it was a really exquisite evening and the girl was quick to respond to all such influences.

“How lovely!” she said impulsively.

Madelene turned. There was a smile on her face, almost the first Ella had seen there; the quiet, somewhat impassive countenance seemed transfigured.

“Yes,” she said, “itislovely. I am glad for you to see it again for the first time on a day like this, though to us, and I think you will agree with us when you have lived here long enough, Coombesthorpe has a charm of its own in every season.”

Ella opened her lips to reply, but before she had time to do so, she caught sight of a figure hastening towards them over the lawn.

“Oh,” said Madelene, “here is Ermine. Yes! Ermie,” she called out, before the new-comer was quite close to them, “it is she—it is really Ella.”

Chapter Four.Back in the Nursery.Ella’s eyes rested on her second sister with admiration scarcely less than that which her first glance at Madelene had aroused.“At least,” she thought to herself, for a moment throwing her prejudice and irritation aside, “at least I have no reason to be anything butproudof my belongings. They are both beautiful.”Ermine who was tall also, though an inch or two shorter than Madelene, stooped to kiss her. And her kiss seemed to Ella less cold than her elder sister’s.“I shall like her the best,” she rapidly decided, for she was much given to rapid decisions.“You have quite taken us by surprise, Ella,” said Ermine, in a tone which told nothing. The truth was that she was on the look-out for some sign or signal from Madelene as to what was the meaning of this sudden invasion and in what spirit it was to be met. For though they were not absolutely free from small differences of opinion in private, the mutual understanding and confidence existing between the sisters were thorough and complete, and even had this not been the case, they would never have allowed any outsider to suspect it.Madelene caught and rightly interpreted Ermine’s unspoken inquiry.“Ella has thought it right,” she began in a somewhat constrained tone, “to come home sooner than was arranged, on—on account of annoyances which she has been exposed to at Mrs Robertson’s and—””‘Annoyances,’” flashed out Ella, thereby giving Ermine her first glimpse of the fieriness of which Madelene had already in the last quarter of an hour seen a good many sparks, ”‘annoyances,’ do you call them? I think that is a very mild term for unendurable, unbearable insult, and—”“Ella,” said Madelene quietly, “you have told me quite as much as I want to hear at present. Papa will be home soon and then you can see what he says. In the meantime it seems to me very much better to drop the subject—it would only leave a painful association with the beginning of your life here to do nothing but uselessly discuss disagreeables. The thing is done—you have left your aunt’s and you are now with us. Neither Ermine nor I need to say anything about it and it is probably much better that we should not.”“Very well,” said Ella, with as near an approach to sullenness in her tone, as such an essentially un-sullen person could be capable of. “I don’t like it, but I don’t want you to think me ill-natured or quarrelsome when I know I am neither, so I’ll give in. But all the same I feel that you blame me and disapprove of me, and I hate to feel that.”She glanced up with a slight suspicious dewiness in her lovely brown eyes.“Poor little thing,” murmured Ermine half under her breath, but a glance from Madelene restrained her. “I know how she means, Maddie,” she said aloud, “I hate the feeling of unexpressed blame or disapproval more than the worst scolding spoken out to me.”“But there is no question of either, just now,” said Madelene smiling a little. “I did tell Ella openly what I thought, but she did not agree with me, and so I don’t see that there’s the least use in saying more. Do let us get into the shade—and I am sure Ella is longing for some tea.”“It is all ready,” said Ermine, leading the way to the table under the trees, as she spoke. “I had some fresh made.”“And Philip?” asked Madelene with the very slightest possible touch of hesitation.“He is gone,” said Ermine. “He left immediately after you went in.”“I thought perhaps he would have stayed after all,” she said vaguely.Ella listened, not without curiosity.“Who is Philip?” she had it on the end of her tongue to say, but she hesitated. “If they wanted to make me feel at home—one of them,” she said to herself, “they would have begun telling me all about everybody and everything, and if they don’t choose to tell I don’t choose to ask. ‘Philip,’ I remember something about some one of the name in a dreamy way. And just now in the house Madelene spoke of a cousin—‘our cousin,’ I think she said. Well I suppose he is my cousin too, and if so, I can’t but hear about him before long, without asking.”One question however occurred to her as a perfectly natural and permissible one.“Is my godmother, Lady Cheynes, at home just now?” she asked abruptly.Madelene looked a little surprised.”‘My godmother,’” she repeated to herself inwardly, “what a queer way of speaking of our aunt! Of course it is only because she is our aunt that she is Ella’s godmother, I remember her offering to be it ‘just to please poor Ellen,’ as she said. What does Ella want to know for? Perhaps she is thinking of making a descent upon Cheynesacre if she doesn’t find things to her mind here! I suppose our mention of Philip put it in her head.”Ella repeated her question in another form.“Lady Cheynes lives near here, does she not? and sheismy godmother,” she said with a touch of asperity, as much as she dared show to Madelene, for there was something in Miss St Quentin’s calm, self-contained manner which awed even while it irritated her younger sister.“Yes,” Madelene replied. “She lives at Cheynesacre, which is about five miles from here. But she is our aunt.”“Oh,” said Ella, looking a little mystified, “then should I call her aunt? When I have written to her I have always said ‘godmother.’”“She is not your aunt,” said Madelene gently. “Unless she particularly wished it, I should think it best for you just to call her by her name.”Ella grew crimson.“Another snub,” she said to herself.“She is really our great-aunt,” Ermine said quickly, as if divining Ella’s feelings. “She was our mother’s aunt, and her grandson, Sir Philip Cheynes, is, therefore, only papa’s first cousin once removed. But he always calls papa uncle.”“Oh,” said Ella. “Of course,” she went on bitterly, “I can’t be expected to understand all the family connections, considering I have been brought up a stranger even to my father. IsupposeColonel St Quentin is my father,” she went on sarcastically, “but I begin to feel a little doubtful even about that.”“Ella,” said Ermine, “what do you mean? You must not take that tone. You are vexing and hurting Madelene,” for Miss St Quentin’s face was pale and her lips quivering, “and I can just tell you, my dear child, now at once, at the first start, that I won’t have Madelene vexed or hurt. You are a foolish baby, otherwise—”Ella’s crimson had turned to something still fierier by this, and her eyes were literally gleaming. She controlled herself for a moment or two to the extent of not speaking, but she lost no time in mentally retracting her decision that she “would like Ermine the best.” It was, perhaps, fortunate that at that moment Barnes reappeared upon the scene. He was not in the habit of so much condescension, but for once dignity had yielded to curiosity. Barnes was dying to have another look at the new arrival, and to be able to judge how things were going to turn out. So he seized the excuse of his master’s dog-cart being seen approaching to betake himself again to the lawn.“If you please, ma’am,” he began, hesitating when he had got so far, partly because he did not feel quite at ease under Miss Ermine’s rather sharp glance, and partly because he was conscious of being rather out of breath—“Well, Barnes?” said Madelene coldly.“I thought you would like to know, ma’am, that the colonel will be here directly. James has just seen the dog-cart at the mile-end turn.”This was a land-mark visible by experienced eyes from Coombesthorpe gates, though at some considerable distance.“Very well. Thank you, Barnes. You can tell my father he will find me in the library. I should like to see him as soon as he comes in,” said Madelene composedly, and Barnes retired, very little the wiser for his expedition, though Ella’s burning cheeks had not been altogether lost upon him, and he gave it as his private opinion to the housekeeper that less peaceful times were in store for “his” young ladies than hitherto.Miss St Quentin got up.“Ella,” she said, “will you come with me at once to see papa?”Ella looked a little taken aback. She had expected to find that Madelene was going to have a long, confidential talk with her father in the first place.“If you like—if you think it best,” she said, with the first approach to misgiving or shyness she had yet shown.“Would you like better to see papa alone?” asked Madelene.Ella instinctively made a little movement towards her.“Oh no, no, thank you,” she said, looking really, frightened.“Well then, we will go together,” said Madelene softened, though her manner scarcely showed it.And in a few minutes Ella found herself again in the library where she had waited for her sister, little more than half-an-hour before.Wheels crunching the gravel drive were heard almost immediately, then Barnes’s voice and another in the hall.“In the library, do you say?” this new voice repeated. And in a moment the door was opened quickly.“Are you here, Madelene? There is nothing wrong, I hope? Barnes met me at the door to tell me you wanted me at once.”“Yes, papa,” said Miss St Quentin, rising as she spoke. “You didn’t meet Philip, then? No, there is nothing wrong. It is only that—” She half turned to look for Ella. The girl was standing just behind her, and it almost seemed to Madelene as if she had intentionally tried to conceal herself from Colonel St Quentin’s notice at the first moment of his entering the room. And for the second time a softened feeling, half of pity, half almost of tenderness, passed through her towards her young sister. “Ella,” she went on, and Ella came forward. “You see, papa,” Madelene added, “thisis why I wanted to see you at once. Ella has arrived—sooner than we expected.” She tried to speak lightly, but Colonel St Quentin knew her too well not to detect her nervousness. He knew, too, that this sudden move on Ella’s part could not but be annoying and disappointing to his elder daughters, who had been making all sorts of plans and arrangements for her joining them at the time already fixed upon.“Ella!” he exclaimed. Then he held out his hand, and, drawing her towards him, kissed her quickly on the forehead. “Is there anything the matter with your Aunt Phillis? You have grown a good deal since last year.”For he had seen Ella from time to time, though but hurriedly.The remark was not a happy one.“I don’t think I have grown at all for two years,” she said. “I have certainly stopped growing now.”Her tone was not conciliating. Colonel St Quentin slightly raised his eyebrows.“I beg your pardon, my dear,” he said. “I had forgotten your mature age. And to what then are we indebted for this unexpected pleasure?” he went on.Madelene looked distressed. This was exactly the tone she most dreaded to hear her father take. He did not mean to hurt Ella, up to now indeed he had no reason to feel displeased with her. For all he knew she had been driven away from Mrs Robertson’s by an outbreak of smallpox, or by the house having been burnt down! And Madelene and Ermine were accustomed to this half-satirical, bantering manner of his, and the good understanding between the three was complete, more perfect indeed than is often the case between father and daughters. For there was an element of something nearly allied togratitudein Colonel St Quentin’s affection for his elder daughters, which even on the parent’s side, between generous natures is quite compatible with the finest development of the normal paternal and filial relations.“It was nothing wrong—that is to say no illness or anything of that kind,” Madelene hastily interposed, “but Ella thought it better to come away. Mr Burton, the old gentleman you know, papa, that Mrs Robertson—”“Yes, yes, that Mrs Robertson is going to marry. Well, what about him?” he interrupted. Colonel St Quentin was much more vivacious than his eldest child.“He seems to have been getting rather jealous, exacting, I don’t know what to call it—annoyed at Ella’s sharing her aunt’s attention with him, I suppose. Is not that it, Ella? And he has shown it in a disagreeable, ill-bred way, it seems,” said Madelene.“He was actually rude, insulting,” said Ella. “He seemed to think I was nothing and nobody, quite forgetting I was your daughter, and—”“Insufferable, purse-proud old ruffian he must be,” interjected her father.Ella’s eyes danced.“Yes, papa—that’s just what it is,” she said, “He could not have been less—respectful,” she added with a little hesitation, “if I had really been a penniless pauper, instead of having a family and home of my own.”Colonel St Quentin glanced at Madelene. He was on the point of speaking, but a sign from her, imperceptible to Ella, restrained him. He contented himself with a sigh. Ella imagined it to be one of sympathy with her wrongs, and her spirits rose—“penniless pauper,” had been very telling, she said to herself.“And so—and so, you and your aunt thought it best for you to come away,” he said. “Well, well, it is a pity things could not have gone on smoothly a little longer, considering how many years you have been with her and how good she has always shown herself to you. In any case she surely might have written or telegraphed—I certainly think she might have considered us alittleas well as old Burton. Of course she sent a servant with you.”“No, no,” said Ella, hesitatingly. “I came alone.”Colonel St Quentin’s face darkened.“She let you—a child like you, travel here alone!” he exclaimed. “Upon my word, Madelene—you knew this?” he added, turning to her.Madelene looked very uneasy.“Papa,” she said, “you don’t quite understand. Mrs Robertson is not so much to blame as you think. Ella—” and she looked at her sister, “Tell papa yourself. It is no use concealing anything. Mrs Robertson will of course be writing herself, and then—”“I have no wish to conceal anything,” said Ella, haughtily. “I never dreamt of such a thing. Yes, what Madelene says is quite true, papa. Aunt Phillis did not send me away. She did not know of my leaving. She will only have heard it by a telegram I sent her from Weevilscoombe.”“Do you mean to say,” said Colonel St Quentin slowly, “that you left your aunt’s house without her sanction or even knowledge, as well as without writing to consult me—in short, that you ran away?”“Something very like it,” said Ella defiantly. Madelene looked grievously distressed.“Oh, Ella,” she said, “do not speak like that. She does not mean it really, papa—she has explained more about it to me. Ella, tell papa you are sorry if you have vexed him. It was natural for her to come to us, papa—even if she has acted hastily.”But Ella would say nothing. She stood there proudly obstinate, and Miss St Quentin’s appeal in her favour fell on unheeding ears. One glance at her, and her father turned away and began walking up and down the room in a way which as Madelene well knew betokened extreme irritation.“Littlesomething,” she heard him murmur, and she hoped Ella did not suspect that the half inaudible word was “fool”—“nothing, no conjunction of things could have been more annoying.”Then he stopped short and stood facing his youngest daughter.“Ella,” he said quietly, but there was something in his tone which made the girl inwardly tremble a little in spite of her determination, “you have acted very wrongly. You have placed me in a most disagreeable position—obliging me to apologise for your rudeness to your aunt, to whom already I was under heavy obligations for you,” here Ella glanced up in surprise, and seemed as if about to speak, but her father would not listen, “and you have certainly given this Mr Burton a victory. The more vulgar he is, if he really is vulgar—I don’t know that I feel inclined to take your word for it—the more he will enjoy it.” Ella compressed her lips tightly. “And,” Colonel St Quentin went on, his hard tone softening as he glanced at Madelene, “there are other reasons why Iextremelyregret the way you have chosen to behave. You have shown no sort of consideration for our—for your sisters’ convenience.”Ella started up. This time she would be heard.“That part of it I cannot in the least understand,” she said. “It seems extraordinary to talk ofinconveniencingone’s own nearest relations by coming home when—when one had nowhere else to go,” and her voice faltered a very little.Her father looked at her with a sort of expression as if he were mentally taking her measure.“Ah, well,” he said, “I did not say I expected you fully to understand. You have shown yourself too childish. But you are not too childish to understand that when one does a distinctly wrong thing one may expect undesirable results in more directions than one. And this—the inconvenience to your sistersIlay stress upon, and I shall expect you to remember this. What room are you intending Ella to have?” he went on, turning rather abruptly to Madelene. “Those you meant for her of course are not ready.”“No,” Miss St Quentin replied. “They are not yet begun, and what should be done will take some weeks. I wanted them to be so nice,” she said regretfully.“I know you did,” said her father, and the sympathy in his tone made Ella unreasonably angry.“In the meantime,” Madelene continued, “I was thinking of giving Ella one of the rooms in the north wing. Indeed they are the only—”“No,” said Colonel St Quentin, “that will not do. We may need those rooms for visitors any day. It is much better for her to have the nursery on the south side. You can easily have what additional furniture is needed moved in, and, as it is Ella’s own doing, she cannot object to less comfortable quarters than you had intended for her for a time.”Ella reared her little head, but said nothing.“You must be tired,” said Madelene, glad to suggest any change, “and I am sure you would like to take your hat and jacket off. Come with me to my room; and I will see about getting the nursery ready, papa.”Ella’s head rose, if possible, still higher as she turned to leave the room. Madelene was leading the way, but as they got to the door her father called her back.“I don’t want to give her a room with a north exposure,” he said to his eldest daughter in a low voice, “you know we cannot be sure of her health yet, and she has hitherto been always in such mild places. But of course we must not make her fanciful.”“No, papa. I quite understand,” said Madelene, gently.But this little incident did not tend to smooth down the ruffled wings of the small personage who followed her sister up the wide staircase with the gait of a dethroned queen.“For to-night, Ella,” said Madelene, “I think you had better sleep in my dressing-room. There is a nice little sofa-bed there that Ermine sometimes uses when we have a fancy for being quite close together. Sometimes when papa is away this big house seems so lonely.”“Is there no bed in the—thenursery?” she inquired icily.“Oh, yes,” said Madelene, “there has always been a bed there. It is a comfortable little room; it is not what used to be thenightnursery; that has been turned into a large linen room. But this is what was your day nursery when you were a tiny child. You can’t remember the house in the least of course?”“Not in the least.”“We have used the nursery, as we still call it, now and then for visitors when the house was very full,” Madelene went on.“Oh, yes; for ladies’-maids, I suppose,” said Ella pleasantly.“No,” said Madelene, “not for ladies’-maids. We would not put our sister in a room used for servants. And I do not wish you to sleep there till it has been made quite comfortable. It is perfectly clean and aired, but I shall change some of the furniture to make it look nicer, even though you are only to have it temporarily, and, to-night, as I said, you can sleep in my dressing-room. Here it is.” She threw open a door as she spoke and passed quickly through the large bedroom it opened into to a smaller one beyond. Both rooms were very pretty and handsomely furnished, with all sorts of girlish “household gods” about, telling of simple but refined tastes, and long association. For in the bookcase, side by side with the favourites of Madelene’s grown-up years, were old childish story-books in covers that had once been brighter than now, and behind the glass of the cabinets were many trifling ornaments of little value save for the memory of those by whom, or the occasions on which, they had been given.Ella glanced around with a peculiar expression. The fresh admiration which had escaped her at sight of the garden was wanting. She said nothing, but stood looking in at the dressing-room door.“Thank you,” she said, “if I may leave my hat and jacket here just now; I will fetch them again as soon as I know where to put them. But I should prefer not to sleep here—I suppose there is no actual objection—it is not particularly inconvenient,” with a slight accent on the two last words, “that I should sleep at once in what is going to be my room. I should very much prefer doing so.”“No,” said Madelene in a rather perplexed tone, “it can be got ready at once if you really wish it.” She was anxious not to oppose Ella when not actually obliged to do so, and she determinedly swallowed her own not unnatural disappointment that the young girl should seem so reluctant to meet her in any direction “half-way.”“Thank you,” said Ella, more heartily than she had yet spoken, “yes, I should like it very much better. Perhaps you would not mind showing me my room now,” she went on, “then when it is ready I can find my way to it alone without troubling you again.”Miss St Quentin did not speak, but she turned to leave the room, followed as before by Ella. They crossed the landing and passed down another corridor.“Down there,” said Madelene, pointing to the end of the passage, “are your real rooms—those that Ermine and I have been planning about for you. The nurseries are down this way,” and she descended a few steps leading on to another smaller landing, from which a flight of back stairs ran down to the ground floor. “I warn you that the room will not seem very attractive, but there is a nice look-out at this side. Our mother and—and yours—both liked these nurseries. They get all the sun going, in winter.”It was a plain room certainly, old-fashioned-looking, for it was less lofty than the other side of the house, and the furniture, such as there was, was simple and seemed to have seen good service. The carpet was rolled up, and the small bed was packed into a corner; the window-curtains were pinned up to keep them clean, though enough was left visible to show that they were of faded chintz.Ella in her turn was silent, but she at once deposited the little hand-bag she carried, and her parasol on the only available place, namely the top of the chest of drawers, with an air of taking possession.“I suppose my little box—I only brought one quite small one with me—may be brought up here?” she said.“Yes, certainly, but youmustleave the room to the housemaids for an hour or two,” Madelene replied. “Will you dress in Ermine’s room, in preference to mine? It is nearer—just up the little flight of stairs.”“I don’t mind in the least,” said Ella. “I must say I had no idea, not the very slightest, that my coming would have caused such a fuss. Perhaps I should apologise, but—I begin to see I have been very foolish. I have been allowing myself to forget the real state of the case, I suppose.”“What do you mean by the real state of the case?” asked Madelene, calmly resting her eyes on her sister’s face.“Why—” began Ella, a little discomfited though she would not show it, “I mean that you and Ermine are not, after all, my own sisters. I seem to be a sort of nobody’s sister—or nobody’s anything, and yet this is my own father’s house. I do not see why everybody should be so down upon me.”“Nobody wishes to be down upon you, Ella,” said Madelene gently. “And I know that I have done and will do all I can to prevent papa being vexed with you. But it has not been a good beginning—there is no use in concealing it, and Ermine and I had wished to welcome you heartily. And won’t you come to my dressing-room after all, Ella, and let me feel that things are not uncomfortable for you?”But Ella stood firm. She shook her little head, though a slight smile quivered about her mouth too.“No thank you,” she said, “I like much better to begin as I am going to be. I hope you don’t think me such a donkey as to mind what kind of a room I have.”“Imind,” said Madelene, as she turned away. The housekeeper and hostess instincts were very strongly developed in Miss St Quentin and Ella had succeeded in wounding her in a tender place.A few minutes later, when Ermine had come up stairs and was standing in her own room, thinking about getting ready for dinner, there came a knock at the door, and in answer to her “come in” Ella appeared. She was carrying a dress on her arm.“Would you mind—?” she began. “Oh I am afraid I am disturbing you—I thought Madelene said something about—that I might dress in here.”“So you may if you like,” said Ermine, not too graciously it must be allowed, for she suspected Ella had been annoying her elder sister. “There is plenty of time. I will go to Madelene till you are ready. You can ring for Stevens, the second housemaid, to help you.”If Ella had had any idea of making friends with Ermine in preference to Madelene it was speedily discarded.“I detest them both,” she exclaimed, as soon as the door had closed on her sister, “nasty, cold, stuck-up things. I almost think I’d rather be back with aunt, if it wasn’t for thathorridold Burton. But I’ll never let auntie know—nonever, that I’m not happy here. It would be such a triumph to that old wretch.”And this lively reflection stopped Ella’s seeking relief for her outraged feelings in tears, which she had been very nearly doing.“Nobody shall be able to say I’m a cry-baby who doesn’t know her own mind,” she said resolutely, as she dressed herself quickly but carefully, for Ella had no love of making a fright of herself!

Ella’s eyes rested on her second sister with admiration scarcely less than that which her first glance at Madelene had aroused.

“At least,” she thought to herself, for a moment throwing her prejudice and irritation aside, “at least I have no reason to be anything butproudof my belongings. They are both beautiful.”

Ermine who was tall also, though an inch or two shorter than Madelene, stooped to kiss her. And her kiss seemed to Ella less cold than her elder sister’s.

“I shall like her the best,” she rapidly decided, for she was much given to rapid decisions.

“You have quite taken us by surprise, Ella,” said Ermine, in a tone which told nothing. The truth was that she was on the look-out for some sign or signal from Madelene as to what was the meaning of this sudden invasion and in what spirit it was to be met. For though they were not absolutely free from small differences of opinion in private, the mutual understanding and confidence existing between the sisters were thorough and complete, and even had this not been the case, they would never have allowed any outsider to suspect it.

Madelene caught and rightly interpreted Ermine’s unspoken inquiry.

“Ella has thought it right,” she began in a somewhat constrained tone, “to come home sooner than was arranged, on—on account of annoyances which she has been exposed to at Mrs Robertson’s and—”

”‘Annoyances,’” flashed out Ella, thereby giving Ermine her first glimpse of the fieriness of which Madelene had already in the last quarter of an hour seen a good many sparks, ”‘annoyances,’ do you call them? I think that is a very mild term for unendurable, unbearable insult, and—”

“Ella,” said Madelene quietly, “you have told me quite as much as I want to hear at present. Papa will be home soon and then you can see what he says. In the meantime it seems to me very much better to drop the subject—it would only leave a painful association with the beginning of your life here to do nothing but uselessly discuss disagreeables. The thing is done—you have left your aunt’s and you are now with us. Neither Ermine nor I need to say anything about it and it is probably much better that we should not.”

“Very well,” said Ella, with as near an approach to sullenness in her tone, as such an essentially un-sullen person could be capable of. “I don’t like it, but I don’t want you to think me ill-natured or quarrelsome when I know I am neither, so I’ll give in. But all the same I feel that you blame me and disapprove of me, and I hate to feel that.”

She glanced up with a slight suspicious dewiness in her lovely brown eyes.

“Poor little thing,” murmured Ermine half under her breath, but a glance from Madelene restrained her. “I know how she means, Maddie,” she said aloud, “I hate the feeling of unexpressed blame or disapproval more than the worst scolding spoken out to me.”

“But there is no question of either, just now,” said Madelene smiling a little. “I did tell Ella openly what I thought, but she did not agree with me, and so I don’t see that there’s the least use in saying more. Do let us get into the shade—and I am sure Ella is longing for some tea.”

“It is all ready,” said Ermine, leading the way to the table under the trees, as she spoke. “I had some fresh made.”

“And Philip?” asked Madelene with the very slightest possible touch of hesitation.

“He is gone,” said Ermine. “He left immediately after you went in.”

“I thought perhaps he would have stayed after all,” she said vaguely.

Ella listened, not without curiosity.

“Who is Philip?” she had it on the end of her tongue to say, but she hesitated. “If they wanted to make me feel at home—one of them,” she said to herself, “they would have begun telling me all about everybody and everything, and if they don’t choose to tell I don’t choose to ask. ‘Philip,’ I remember something about some one of the name in a dreamy way. And just now in the house Madelene spoke of a cousin—‘our cousin,’ I think she said. Well I suppose he is my cousin too, and if so, I can’t but hear about him before long, without asking.”

One question however occurred to her as a perfectly natural and permissible one.

“Is my godmother, Lady Cheynes, at home just now?” she asked abruptly.

Madelene looked a little surprised.

”‘My godmother,’” she repeated to herself inwardly, “what a queer way of speaking of our aunt! Of course it is only because she is our aunt that she is Ella’s godmother, I remember her offering to be it ‘just to please poor Ellen,’ as she said. What does Ella want to know for? Perhaps she is thinking of making a descent upon Cheynesacre if she doesn’t find things to her mind here! I suppose our mention of Philip put it in her head.”

Ella repeated her question in another form.

“Lady Cheynes lives near here, does she not? and sheismy godmother,” she said with a touch of asperity, as much as she dared show to Madelene, for there was something in Miss St Quentin’s calm, self-contained manner which awed even while it irritated her younger sister.

“Yes,” Madelene replied. “She lives at Cheynesacre, which is about five miles from here. But she is our aunt.”

“Oh,” said Ella, looking a little mystified, “then should I call her aunt? When I have written to her I have always said ‘godmother.’”

“She is not your aunt,” said Madelene gently. “Unless she particularly wished it, I should think it best for you just to call her by her name.”

Ella grew crimson.

“Another snub,” she said to herself.

“She is really our great-aunt,” Ermine said quickly, as if divining Ella’s feelings. “She was our mother’s aunt, and her grandson, Sir Philip Cheynes, is, therefore, only papa’s first cousin once removed. But he always calls papa uncle.”

“Oh,” said Ella. “Of course,” she went on bitterly, “I can’t be expected to understand all the family connections, considering I have been brought up a stranger even to my father. IsupposeColonel St Quentin is my father,” she went on sarcastically, “but I begin to feel a little doubtful even about that.”

“Ella,” said Ermine, “what do you mean? You must not take that tone. You are vexing and hurting Madelene,” for Miss St Quentin’s face was pale and her lips quivering, “and I can just tell you, my dear child, now at once, at the first start, that I won’t have Madelene vexed or hurt. You are a foolish baby, otherwise—”

Ella’s crimson had turned to something still fierier by this, and her eyes were literally gleaming. She controlled herself for a moment or two to the extent of not speaking, but she lost no time in mentally retracting her decision that she “would like Ermine the best.” It was, perhaps, fortunate that at that moment Barnes reappeared upon the scene. He was not in the habit of so much condescension, but for once dignity had yielded to curiosity. Barnes was dying to have another look at the new arrival, and to be able to judge how things were going to turn out. So he seized the excuse of his master’s dog-cart being seen approaching to betake himself again to the lawn.

“If you please, ma’am,” he began, hesitating when he had got so far, partly because he did not feel quite at ease under Miss Ermine’s rather sharp glance, and partly because he was conscious of being rather out of breath—

“Well, Barnes?” said Madelene coldly.

“I thought you would like to know, ma’am, that the colonel will be here directly. James has just seen the dog-cart at the mile-end turn.”

This was a land-mark visible by experienced eyes from Coombesthorpe gates, though at some considerable distance.

“Very well. Thank you, Barnes. You can tell my father he will find me in the library. I should like to see him as soon as he comes in,” said Madelene composedly, and Barnes retired, very little the wiser for his expedition, though Ella’s burning cheeks had not been altogether lost upon him, and he gave it as his private opinion to the housekeeper that less peaceful times were in store for “his” young ladies than hitherto.

Miss St Quentin got up.

“Ella,” she said, “will you come with me at once to see papa?”

Ella looked a little taken aback. She had expected to find that Madelene was going to have a long, confidential talk with her father in the first place.

“If you like—if you think it best,” she said, with the first approach to misgiving or shyness she had yet shown.

“Would you like better to see papa alone?” asked Madelene.

Ella instinctively made a little movement towards her.

“Oh no, no, thank you,” she said, looking really, frightened.

“Well then, we will go together,” said Madelene softened, though her manner scarcely showed it.

And in a few minutes Ella found herself again in the library where she had waited for her sister, little more than half-an-hour before.

Wheels crunching the gravel drive were heard almost immediately, then Barnes’s voice and another in the hall.

“In the library, do you say?” this new voice repeated. And in a moment the door was opened quickly.

“Are you here, Madelene? There is nothing wrong, I hope? Barnes met me at the door to tell me you wanted me at once.”

“Yes, papa,” said Miss St Quentin, rising as she spoke. “You didn’t meet Philip, then? No, there is nothing wrong. It is only that—” She half turned to look for Ella. The girl was standing just behind her, and it almost seemed to Madelene as if she had intentionally tried to conceal herself from Colonel St Quentin’s notice at the first moment of his entering the room. And for the second time a softened feeling, half of pity, half almost of tenderness, passed through her towards her young sister. “Ella,” she went on, and Ella came forward. “You see, papa,” Madelene added, “thisis why I wanted to see you at once. Ella has arrived—sooner than we expected.” She tried to speak lightly, but Colonel St Quentin knew her too well not to detect her nervousness. He knew, too, that this sudden move on Ella’s part could not but be annoying and disappointing to his elder daughters, who had been making all sorts of plans and arrangements for her joining them at the time already fixed upon.

“Ella!” he exclaimed. Then he held out his hand, and, drawing her towards him, kissed her quickly on the forehead. “Is there anything the matter with your Aunt Phillis? You have grown a good deal since last year.”

For he had seen Ella from time to time, though but hurriedly.

The remark was not a happy one.

“I don’t think I have grown at all for two years,” she said. “I have certainly stopped growing now.”

Her tone was not conciliating. Colonel St Quentin slightly raised his eyebrows.

“I beg your pardon, my dear,” he said. “I had forgotten your mature age. And to what then are we indebted for this unexpected pleasure?” he went on.

Madelene looked distressed. This was exactly the tone she most dreaded to hear her father take. He did not mean to hurt Ella, up to now indeed he had no reason to feel displeased with her. For all he knew she had been driven away from Mrs Robertson’s by an outbreak of smallpox, or by the house having been burnt down! And Madelene and Ermine were accustomed to this half-satirical, bantering manner of his, and the good understanding between the three was complete, more perfect indeed than is often the case between father and daughters. For there was an element of something nearly allied togratitudein Colonel St Quentin’s affection for his elder daughters, which even on the parent’s side, between generous natures is quite compatible with the finest development of the normal paternal and filial relations.

“It was nothing wrong—that is to say no illness or anything of that kind,” Madelene hastily interposed, “but Ella thought it better to come away. Mr Burton, the old gentleman you know, papa, that Mrs Robertson—”

“Yes, yes, that Mrs Robertson is going to marry. Well, what about him?” he interrupted. Colonel St Quentin was much more vivacious than his eldest child.

“He seems to have been getting rather jealous, exacting, I don’t know what to call it—annoyed at Ella’s sharing her aunt’s attention with him, I suppose. Is not that it, Ella? And he has shown it in a disagreeable, ill-bred way, it seems,” said Madelene.

“He was actually rude, insulting,” said Ella. “He seemed to think I was nothing and nobody, quite forgetting I was your daughter, and—”

“Insufferable, purse-proud old ruffian he must be,” interjected her father.

Ella’s eyes danced.

“Yes, papa—that’s just what it is,” she said, “He could not have been less—respectful,” she added with a little hesitation, “if I had really been a penniless pauper, instead of having a family and home of my own.”

Colonel St Quentin glanced at Madelene. He was on the point of speaking, but a sign from her, imperceptible to Ella, restrained him. He contented himself with a sigh. Ella imagined it to be one of sympathy with her wrongs, and her spirits rose—“penniless pauper,” had been very telling, she said to herself.

“And so—and so, you and your aunt thought it best for you to come away,” he said. “Well, well, it is a pity things could not have gone on smoothly a little longer, considering how many years you have been with her and how good she has always shown herself to you. In any case she surely might have written or telegraphed—I certainly think she might have considered us alittleas well as old Burton. Of course she sent a servant with you.”

“No, no,” said Ella, hesitatingly. “I came alone.”

Colonel St Quentin’s face darkened.

“She let you—a child like you, travel here alone!” he exclaimed. “Upon my word, Madelene—you knew this?” he added, turning to her.

Madelene looked very uneasy.

“Papa,” she said, “you don’t quite understand. Mrs Robertson is not so much to blame as you think. Ella—” and she looked at her sister, “Tell papa yourself. It is no use concealing anything. Mrs Robertson will of course be writing herself, and then—”

“I have no wish to conceal anything,” said Ella, haughtily. “I never dreamt of such a thing. Yes, what Madelene says is quite true, papa. Aunt Phillis did not send me away. She did not know of my leaving. She will only have heard it by a telegram I sent her from Weevilscoombe.”

“Do you mean to say,” said Colonel St Quentin slowly, “that you left your aunt’s house without her sanction or even knowledge, as well as without writing to consult me—in short, that you ran away?”

“Something very like it,” said Ella defiantly. Madelene looked grievously distressed.

“Oh, Ella,” she said, “do not speak like that. She does not mean it really, papa—she has explained more about it to me. Ella, tell papa you are sorry if you have vexed him. It was natural for her to come to us, papa—even if she has acted hastily.”

But Ella would say nothing. She stood there proudly obstinate, and Miss St Quentin’s appeal in her favour fell on unheeding ears. One glance at her, and her father turned away and began walking up and down the room in a way which as Madelene well knew betokened extreme irritation.

“Littlesomething,” she heard him murmur, and she hoped Ella did not suspect that the half inaudible word was “fool”—“nothing, no conjunction of things could have been more annoying.”

Then he stopped short and stood facing his youngest daughter.

“Ella,” he said quietly, but there was something in his tone which made the girl inwardly tremble a little in spite of her determination, “you have acted very wrongly. You have placed me in a most disagreeable position—obliging me to apologise for your rudeness to your aunt, to whom already I was under heavy obligations for you,” here Ella glanced up in surprise, and seemed as if about to speak, but her father would not listen, “and you have certainly given this Mr Burton a victory. The more vulgar he is, if he really is vulgar—I don’t know that I feel inclined to take your word for it—the more he will enjoy it.” Ella compressed her lips tightly. “And,” Colonel St Quentin went on, his hard tone softening as he glanced at Madelene, “there are other reasons why Iextremelyregret the way you have chosen to behave. You have shown no sort of consideration for our—for your sisters’ convenience.”

Ella started up. This time she would be heard.

“That part of it I cannot in the least understand,” she said. “It seems extraordinary to talk ofinconveniencingone’s own nearest relations by coming home when—when one had nowhere else to go,” and her voice faltered a very little.

Her father looked at her with a sort of expression as if he were mentally taking her measure.

“Ah, well,” he said, “I did not say I expected you fully to understand. You have shown yourself too childish. But you are not too childish to understand that when one does a distinctly wrong thing one may expect undesirable results in more directions than one. And this—the inconvenience to your sistersIlay stress upon, and I shall expect you to remember this. What room are you intending Ella to have?” he went on, turning rather abruptly to Madelene. “Those you meant for her of course are not ready.”

“No,” Miss St Quentin replied. “They are not yet begun, and what should be done will take some weeks. I wanted them to be so nice,” she said regretfully.

“I know you did,” said her father, and the sympathy in his tone made Ella unreasonably angry.

“In the meantime,” Madelene continued, “I was thinking of giving Ella one of the rooms in the north wing. Indeed they are the only—”

“No,” said Colonel St Quentin, “that will not do. We may need those rooms for visitors any day. It is much better for her to have the nursery on the south side. You can easily have what additional furniture is needed moved in, and, as it is Ella’s own doing, she cannot object to less comfortable quarters than you had intended for her for a time.”

Ella reared her little head, but said nothing.

“You must be tired,” said Madelene, glad to suggest any change, “and I am sure you would like to take your hat and jacket off. Come with me to my room; and I will see about getting the nursery ready, papa.”

Ella’s head rose, if possible, still higher as she turned to leave the room. Madelene was leading the way, but as they got to the door her father called her back.

“I don’t want to give her a room with a north exposure,” he said to his eldest daughter in a low voice, “you know we cannot be sure of her health yet, and she has hitherto been always in such mild places. But of course we must not make her fanciful.”

“No, papa. I quite understand,” said Madelene, gently.

But this little incident did not tend to smooth down the ruffled wings of the small personage who followed her sister up the wide staircase with the gait of a dethroned queen.

“For to-night, Ella,” said Madelene, “I think you had better sleep in my dressing-room. There is a nice little sofa-bed there that Ermine sometimes uses when we have a fancy for being quite close together. Sometimes when papa is away this big house seems so lonely.”

“Is there no bed in the—thenursery?” she inquired icily.

“Oh, yes,” said Madelene, “there has always been a bed there. It is a comfortable little room; it is not what used to be thenightnursery; that has been turned into a large linen room. But this is what was your day nursery when you were a tiny child. You can’t remember the house in the least of course?”

“Not in the least.”

“We have used the nursery, as we still call it, now and then for visitors when the house was very full,” Madelene went on.

“Oh, yes; for ladies’-maids, I suppose,” said Ella pleasantly.

“No,” said Madelene, “not for ladies’-maids. We would not put our sister in a room used for servants. And I do not wish you to sleep there till it has been made quite comfortable. It is perfectly clean and aired, but I shall change some of the furniture to make it look nicer, even though you are only to have it temporarily, and, to-night, as I said, you can sleep in my dressing-room. Here it is.” She threw open a door as she spoke and passed quickly through the large bedroom it opened into to a smaller one beyond. Both rooms were very pretty and handsomely furnished, with all sorts of girlish “household gods” about, telling of simple but refined tastes, and long association. For in the bookcase, side by side with the favourites of Madelene’s grown-up years, were old childish story-books in covers that had once been brighter than now, and behind the glass of the cabinets were many trifling ornaments of little value save for the memory of those by whom, or the occasions on which, they had been given.

Ella glanced around with a peculiar expression. The fresh admiration which had escaped her at sight of the garden was wanting. She said nothing, but stood looking in at the dressing-room door.

“Thank you,” she said, “if I may leave my hat and jacket here just now; I will fetch them again as soon as I know where to put them. But I should prefer not to sleep here—I suppose there is no actual objection—it is not particularly inconvenient,” with a slight accent on the two last words, “that I should sleep at once in what is going to be my room. I should very much prefer doing so.”

“No,” said Madelene in a rather perplexed tone, “it can be got ready at once if you really wish it.” She was anxious not to oppose Ella when not actually obliged to do so, and she determinedly swallowed her own not unnatural disappointment that the young girl should seem so reluctant to meet her in any direction “half-way.”

“Thank you,” said Ella, more heartily than she had yet spoken, “yes, I should like it very much better. Perhaps you would not mind showing me my room now,” she went on, “then when it is ready I can find my way to it alone without troubling you again.”

Miss St Quentin did not speak, but she turned to leave the room, followed as before by Ella. They crossed the landing and passed down another corridor.

“Down there,” said Madelene, pointing to the end of the passage, “are your real rooms—those that Ermine and I have been planning about for you. The nurseries are down this way,” and she descended a few steps leading on to another smaller landing, from which a flight of back stairs ran down to the ground floor. “I warn you that the room will not seem very attractive, but there is a nice look-out at this side. Our mother and—and yours—both liked these nurseries. They get all the sun going, in winter.”

It was a plain room certainly, old-fashioned-looking, for it was less lofty than the other side of the house, and the furniture, such as there was, was simple and seemed to have seen good service. The carpet was rolled up, and the small bed was packed into a corner; the window-curtains were pinned up to keep them clean, though enough was left visible to show that they were of faded chintz.

Ella in her turn was silent, but she at once deposited the little hand-bag she carried, and her parasol on the only available place, namely the top of the chest of drawers, with an air of taking possession.

“I suppose my little box—I only brought one quite small one with me—may be brought up here?” she said.

“Yes, certainly, but youmustleave the room to the housemaids for an hour or two,” Madelene replied. “Will you dress in Ermine’s room, in preference to mine? It is nearer—just up the little flight of stairs.”

“I don’t mind in the least,” said Ella. “I must say I had no idea, not the very slightest, that my coming would have caused such a fuss. Perhaps I should apologise, but—I begin to see I have been very foolish. I have been allowing myself to forget the real state of the case, I suppose.”

“What do you mean by the real state of the case?” asked Madelene, calmly resting her eyes on her sister’s face.

“Why—” began Ella, a little discomfited though she would not show it, “I mean that you and Ermine are not, after all, my own sisters. I seem to be a sort of nobody’s sister—or nobody’s anything, and yet this is my own father’s house. I do not see why everybody should be so down upon me.”

“Nobody wishes to be down upon you, Ella,” said Madelene gently. “And I know that I have done and will do all I can to prevent papa being vexed with you. But it has not been a good beginning—there is no use in concealing it, and Ermine and I had wished to welcome you heartily. And won’t you come to my dressing-room after all, Ella, and let me feel that things are not uncomfortable for you?”

But Ella stood firm. She shook her little head, though a slight smile quivered about her mouth too.

“No thank you,” she said, “I like much better to begin as I am going to be. I hope you don’t think me such a donkey as to mind what kind of a room I have.”

“Imind,” said Madelene, as she turned away. The housekeeper and hostess instincts were very strongly developed in Miss St Quentin and Ella had succeeded in wounding her in a tender place.

A few minutes later, when Ermine had come up stairs and was standing in her own room, thinking about getting ready for dinner, there came a knock at the door, and in answer to her “come in” Ella appeared. She was carrying a dress on her arm.

“Would you mind—?” she began. “Oh I am afraid I am disturbing you—I thought Madelene said something about—that I might dress in here.”

“So you may if you like,” said Ermine, not too graciously it must be allowed, for she suspected Ella had been annoying her elder sister. “There is plenty of time. I will go to Madelene till you are ready. You can ring for Stevens, the second housemaid, to help you.”

If Ella had had any idea of making friends with Ermine in preference to Madelene it was speedily discarded.

“I detest them both,” she exclaimed, as soon as the door had closed on her sister, “nasty, cold, stuck-up things. I almost think I’d rather be back with aunt, if it wasn’t for thathorridold Burton. But I’ll never let auntie know—nonever, that I’m not happy here. It would be such a triumph to that old wretch.”

And this lively reflection stopped Ella’s seeking relief for her outraged feelings in tears, which she had been very nearly doing.

“Nobody shall be able to say I’m a cry-baby who doesn’t know her own mind,” she said resolutely, as she dressed herself quickly but carefully, for Ella had no love of making a fright of herself!

Back to IndexNext