Chapter Twelve.

Chapter Twelve.Smuts.The interview with her father turned out satisfactorily for Madelene. Each was suffering from inward consciousness of having acted to some extent unreasonably, and each felt a kind of unexpressed relief at not being brought to task. Colonel St Quentin’s manner and tone were plainly deprecatory of blame.“You must not think me weak and foolish for having given in to your aunt, when I had stood out so—well, I suppose I must say—obstinately with you and Ermine,” he said with a slight smile.“Ermine and I were only too delighted for Ella to have the pleasure of it,” Madelene replied.“I knew that—I was assured of that,” said her father, and then the subject was allowed to drop.Ella was looking very demure in her grey linsey-woolsey, waiting beside the tea-table in the library, when the two others joined her. A smile which she could not altogether repress, crossed Ermine’s face as the contrast between her little sister’s present “get-up” and that in which she had last seen her, crossed her mind.“Oh, well, I’m not sorry to be home again,” she said aloud. “What do you think, Ella? Would you like to have yesterday night over again?”Ella looked up with a half doubtful questioning in her sweet eyes. Was Ermine chaffing her, or was this veiled sarcasm, or what? But before she had time to form any judgment on the matter, to her surprise Madelene interposed.“Ella,” she said—she was standing near the fireplace, and her tall figure in its dark winter garb looked very imposing, though her face, had Ella seen it clearly, was gentle and almost touching in its expression—“Ella, my dear,” she said, “I want to say to you now, at once, that I am very sorry I so misjudged you last night, blaming you when you did not deserve it—when indeed youcouldnot have deserved it; for a moment’s reflection might have shown me you could not have come to the Manor unknown to or unapproved of by papa. But I was so astonished that for once, I suppose I lost my head. Will you forget about it, and believe that I am very happy you had the pleasure?”“Of course,” said Ella. “I often am hasty myself—I never dislike any one for being a little cross,” she went on, smiling. “I’m very glad you liked me to be there. Papa was very kind about it,” she added, unable to repress a little hit at her sister, “he agreed to my goingat oncewhen my godmother proposed it.”Madelene’s face grew cold again.“Why could you not stop at the right place, you foolish child?” thought Ermine. But she kept her thoughts to herself—a glance at Madelene had told her that it was best so.Outwardly, however, things seemed most prosperously smooth.“Your frock looked lovely, Ella,” said Ermine. “Mélanie will be quite jealous of Jones.”“And it is really not spoilt at all,” said Ella, eagerly. “But oh, Madelene, that reminds me—I had such a misfortune.”Miss St Quentin looked up anxiously. To her nature any appeal for sympathy always brought healing on its wings.“What?” she said, expecting to hear of some trifling accident. Her face expressed real concern when she heard the particulars of the lost shoe.“We must certainly try to get it back,” she said. “It is pretty sure to have been picked up. Only if any dishonest servant has got hold of it, the buckle would be a temptation; an ignorant person would so easily mistake the paste for diamonds—I will write to Mrs Belvoir to-morrow, Ella—it is too late to-night—and send over a man expressly.”“Thank you,” said Ella. “But,” she went on, “will she understand? Did she know I was your sister, as I didn’t come with you?”“Of course,” said Madelene haughtily. “You don’t suppose Ermine and I would have given any cause for gossip. We took care to speak quite naturally the next morning about Aunt Anna having brought you over for a little—it was all Louis Belvoir, who Mistook your name at the first.”“Oh yes, I see,” said Ella. She seemed on the point of saying more, but her courage failed her.“I wonder if they know who the man was that I danced that last waltz with,” she said to herself.Ermine seemed to play into her hands.“How did you like young Belvoir, by the by, Ella?” she inquired. “He dances well, doesn’t he? What other men did you dance with?”But Ella was not going to be trotted out, especially not before Madelene, whose eyes, she fancied, and perhaps not without reason, were fixed on her scrutinisingly.“There were several,” she replied; “I didn’t hear all their names distinctly. Yes, I thought Mr Belvoir danced well, but there were one or two others who danced quite as well.”“Oh, indeed,” said Ermine. “No one in particular, then?”“Major Frost was very amusing,” said Ella.Madelene, who had finished her tea, put down her cup and turned to the door.“We had better go up stairs and take our things off, Ermine,” she said.“I am afraid Ella is the reverse of ingenuous,” she said when they had left the library. “Weknowshe danced more with Philip than any one. She is a regular woman of the world in the way she can keep back what she does not choose to tell—it would be only natural for her to ask us who he was, if she really did not know.”“Oh, Maddie, I don’t think you are fair about her,” said Ermine. “And talking of not being ingenuous—she might accuse us of it when she comes to know him. She will know we must have seen her dancing with him, if she takes the trouble to think it over, and our not mentioning his being there may strike her.”“Well, it isn’t my doing. I hate mystifications,” said Madelene. “However as Aunt Anna is mixed up in it I suppose it will be all right. But—no, Ermine, I’m afraid Ella is not the sort of wife we should wish for Philip. And I’m afraid of letting myself wish it, lest I should really be influenced by selfish motives, for no doubt it might make things easier.”“You’re enough to provoke a saint,” said Ermine. “However I don’t suppose either you or I will have much power to ‘make or mar’ in the matter. If it is to be, it will be—so far we haven’t meddled;wedidn’t originate their meeting as they did.”“People always take refuge in that sort of fatalism when they want to throw off responsibility,” said Madelene. “I don’t believe in fatality about marriages any more than about anything else. ButIshall not interfere, I am far too uncertain of its being a good thing for Philip.”“Maddie has had an Indian letter, and she has got a fit of extra conscientiousness in consequence,” thought Ermine. “If I were Bernard, I don’t think I’d stand it.”And yet as she looked at her sister, and saw the gentle sadness in her eyes, and noted the increasing signs of endurance and uncomplaining patience in the delicate features, a sort of rush of tenderness came over her. No one better deserved to be happy than her own sweet Madelene, she said to herself.The evening passed peacefully. Colonel St Quentin was pleased to have his daughters with him again, and pleased too with himself for feeling so much more cordial and affectionate than heretofore towards his youngest child. And Madelene was pleased too to see him so, for jealousy formed no part of her nature, though her exaggerated conscientiousness and self-questioning sometimes took the appearance of suspiciousness of others. Ella’s quick eyes detected her elder sister’s satisfaction at her father’s kindlier tone, and she felt puzzled by it.“She does seem as if she wanted papa and me to get on better together, after all,” she thought, and the idea softened her own manner in turn. Besides this, she was, though she would on no account have confessed it, both tired and sleepy; the unusual excitement, more than actual fatigue had told upon her, and she was not sorry when Ermine, openly acknowledging that she was quite ready to go to bed, proposed that they should all say good-night.“It’s quite disgraceful to be so done up after such a very mild amount of dissipation,” she said laughingly. “Philip would make great fun of us. He is coming over to-morrow, Maddie, you know.”“Yes, papa says Aunt Anna left a message from him to tell us so,” said Madelene thoughtlessly.Ella pricked up her ears at this.“How could—” she began, but something in the expression of her elder sister’s face made her stop short.“Ah,” she reflected, “Madelene said that by mistake. They didn’t want me to know that precious cousin oftheirswas coming. I shall hate him for being their cousin and not mine—only he is dear godmother’s grandson, and I should like him for that. Godmother must have had a letter from him while I was there, I suppose. She might have told me of it.”And a feeling of resentment to Lady Cheynes too, mingled with her indignation against her sisters. Her “good-night” was correspondingly cold, but they did not seem to notice it.“I will write a note to Mrs Belvoir to-night, Ella,” said Madelene in a low voice, as they were leaving the room, “to have it ready for to-morrow morning, so that one of the grooms can take it over quite early and wait for an answer.”“Thank you,” said Ella, and for the moment she felt really obliged. The lost slipper was weighing a good deal on her mind, and she began to think that after all she would feel rather foolish if obliged to confess to her godmother how she had lost it.“She will certainly say I should have found it out before I got into the carriage, but I quite thought it was among the rugs—and Jones looked herself for me, this morning. I think it must have slipped off just as I stepped in and rolled out before they shut the door.”And her dreams were haunted by the slipper. She thought Madelene came down to breakfast next morning with it tied on to her head as an ornament, and that it suddenly skipped on to the floor all of itself, and became a wonderful white satin chariot which careered round the room drawn by six cats, while on the box sat her partner in her last waltz at the Manor, shouting at the top of his voice that he was going to take a note to Mrs Belvoir first thing in the morning, and to wait for an answer. And these words “wait for an answer,” seemed to mingle themselves fantastically with all the consciousness of her sleep. Or perhaps it seemed so to her, for they were the first that fell on her ears as she began to awake next morning. The door was opening and some one just entering was speaking to another person outside.“Yes,” said the voice—it was old Hester’s—“wait for an answer—be sure to tell him.”“What are you talking about?” asked Ella. “What is it about waiting for an answer?”“It’s the message for the groom, who’s going to the Manor, Miss Ella,” Hester replied. “Miss St. Quentin gave me the note last night, and I was telling Stevens. She’s so sorry for you to be uneasy about the shoe—‘taking off the pleasure of her first little treat, poor child,’ was her words to me, Miss Ella.”“It’s very kind of her,” said Ella sleepily, with again the return upon herself as to her judgment of her sister. Suddenly a new idea struck her. “Hester,” she said, “what sort of person is Sir Philip Cheynes? Is he nice, or is he conceited and stuck-up, and—flirting, you know—that sort of a man?”“Bless you, no, Miss Ella, not as ever I’ve heard tell. What’s put such a notion in your head? If he was stuck-up, he’d not be so to his own cousins; and he does think all the world of them, that he does. And as for being a flirting gentleman, he’d be uncommon clever to get Miss Maddie or Miss Ermie to join in such like nonsense, though by what I hear sometimes, young ladies—and young ladies who think a deal of themselves too—is not so partickler as they might be, now a days. I don’t hold with that tennis-playing, Miss Ella, and all that sort of apeing gentlemen, as seems the fashion.”Ella laughed.“Tennis is very dull,Ithink. I shouldn’t like to spend several hours a day at it,” she said.“Sir Philip is evidently a prig of the first water,” she decided mentally. “But if so, he’s not likely to admireme, so why do they want to keep me out of his way, as I see they do? And they have got god mother to join them in it for some reason.”Ella’s inward indignation sent her down stairs to breakfast in anything but a genial mood. And, as her moods were very apt to do, it found its expression in her outer woman.“You do look so grim, Ella,” said Ermine. “I am so tired of that linsey-woolsey frock of yours—couldn’t you put a bit of scarlet about yourself somewhere? Even a red tucker would be an improvement.”Madelene glanced at her younger sister as Ermine spoke.“You might wear your sailor serge every morning now, I think, Ella,” she said. “That frock is getting shabby and it is a dingy shade. You remember we couldn’t get the grey we wanted. About Christmas time too, one likes to see people looking bright.”Ella surveyed her garments with a half indifferent air that was rather irritating.“I think it does very well,” she replied. “Even aunty thought two new winter frocks enough. I don’t see that it matters so long as it is warm, and indeed to tell the truth, I like this better than my Sunday frock; it is so clumsily made.”Madelene said no more.“Every step forward seems followed by two backwards with her,” she reflected. “Ermine had better not build any castles in the air about her and Philip—if she had the slightest suspicion thatweshould like such a thing, it would, I do believe, make Ella detest him.”“I have sent over to the Manor, Ella,” she said as she rose from the breakfast-table; “the groom should be back by half-past twelve or so, as Mrs Belvoir is sure to be at home. I am sure you are feeling anxious about the poor little slipper.”“I am,” said Ella. “Thank you, Madelene.”And indeed it was partly distress of mind about the lost property which was making Ella indisposed this morning to take a roseate view of life.“The weather seems really settling in for frost,” said Ermine. “After the rain it will make the roads very slippery. I hope the frost will last till after Christmas, now it has begun. I wish I could go a good long walk this morning, but I fear we mustn’t think of it—eh, Maddie?”“No—there are arrears of things to see to even after being away only two days,” Miss St Quentin replied. “You might get Philip to take you a walk after luncheon, when I go to sit with papa.”“And Ella too,” Ermine added. “Would you like a nice long walk, Ella? It would be a pleasant variety to have an escort for once.”“No, thank you,” said Ella, stiffly, though in her heart she thought Ermine much kinder than her elder sister. “I don’t care for walking in the afternoon. I shall go out after I’ve finished my practising this morning.”“Not alone, Ella?” said Madelene; “or at least if you do go alone, it will not be further than the grounds, I hope?”“No,” said Ella, “I don’t mean to leave the grounds.”She spoke more amiably—for this sort of authority or interference on her sister’s part did not irritate her, as it might have done some girls. She resented nothing which gave her the sensation of being considered a person of importance.Twelve o’clock found her walking briskly down the drive which led to the principal entrance. The sharp clear air stimulated her nerves pleasantly; she felt high-spirited and almost happy. As Madelene had said truly, Coombesthorpe had a beauty of its own in every season.“It is lovely,” thought Ella, as she looked around her, down across the gently sloping lawns to where the first murmur of water told of the stream pursuing its way, lonely now, without the merry companionship of its summer friends, the birds and gnats and butterflies; not to speak of the many quaint creatures who found their homes on its banks. “I wonder where they all go to?” she went on. “I suppose lots of them are asleep. I wish I knew more about country things. Ermine is so clever about them. I could learn all sorts of things from her if I was sure she—they—wanted to like me—”Then her gaze passed on from the thicket concealing the brook, up again to the hills rising beyond. There was snow on the higher peaks; to be guessed at rather than seen, for a thin wintry haze made hills and clouds melt into each other. Ella shivered a little.“Fancy living up on those hills,” she thought. “And they say there are cottages there where the people stay all the winter. The road to the Manor passes round the foot of them. I wonder how soon the groom will be back. Oh, I do hope he will bring the shoe.” She had forgotten about it for the moment; the recollection made her hasten her steps. She would ask the woman at the lodge if possibly the groom had already returned; if not, she would walk a little way down the road, which for some distance beyond these first gates remained a private one, in hopes of meeting him, for it would be easy to ask if he was bringing back a parcel or only a note.There seemed no one stirring about the lodge when she got there, which was unusual, as the couple who lived in it were the proud possessors of two very pretty children, one or other or both of whom were generally to be seen peeping out of the doorway when any one came by.“They seem all asleep,” thought Ella, who had long ago made great friends with the little family. “I hope they’re not ill.”She made her way to the door as she spoke, and tapped gently, at the same time endeavouring to “lift the latch,” like Red Riding Hood of old, and let herself in. But the door resisted; it was evidently fastened inside.Ella tapped more loudly, and almost before she finished doing so, a faint sound of weeping caught her ear, but no reply came to her knocks.“Is any one in?” she called out, beginning to feel a little uneasy. “Willie, Hetty, who is it crying? Mrs Rose, are you there?”A sort of movement inside, sounding like the slow, enforcedly deliberate way in which a little, short-legged child gets down from a chair, followed by a pattering of small feet across the stone floor, became audible. Then a doleful voice replied to her questions:“I’m all aloned. I’m Hetty. I dunno who you is. Mammy’s took Willie in Master Crocker’s waggin to doctor’s. Willie’s eyes is bad. And the pot won’t budge and the dinner’s spilin.”Then ensued a louder burst of bitter wailing.Ella rapped again impatiently.“Let me in then, you silly child,” she cried. “I’m Ella—Miss Ella from the hall. You know my voice, surely, Hetty. I’m not a wolf,” she added, half laughing.Thus adjured, Hetty cautiously approached.“Miss Ella,” she said in a tone of relief. “I’ll try to loose the door, Miss, but its drefful hard. Mother locked it outside and pushed the key in under the door. I weren’t to open it till daddy comed home, but mammy didn’t know Miss Ella’d be coming,” she added, as if half in vindication to herself of her departure from mammy’s injunctions.“Then do the same again,” said Ella. “Push the key under the door and I’ll open it outside. Your little hands can’t turn it.”Hetty gave a sort of grunt of satisfaction at the brilliant idea. The key was pushed through, and in another moment, Ella stood on the open threshold. Poor Hetty’s face was swollen with crying and scorched by the fire, and her first greeting to Ella was a fresh burst of tears.“’Tis the dinner—daddy’s dinner,” she exclaimed, and sure enough a rather ominous smell of burning drew Ella’s attention to the fire. Quick as thought the girl pulled off her thick jacket, tossed aside her fur cap—for the kitchen felt very hot after the keen clear air outside—and stood for a moment investigating the formidable-looking pot, which was the cause of Hetty’s woe.“Give me a towel or something, Hetty. I don’t want to burn myself.”Hetty stuffed a substantial cloth into her visitor’s hands.“And a apern, Miss, or you’ll smutty your nice gown. Here’s one of mammy’s.”Ella took the hint and tied it on, and well for the linsey-woolsey that she did so, as it was not without various black streaks on the vicarious apron that she succeeded in safely depositing “daddy’s dinner” on the hearth-stone.“Goodness! how heavy pots are,” she exclaimed, “and how the fire does scorch one’s face—even a little one like that. I don’t think the dinner’smuchburnt, Hetty,” she went on, carefully investigating the contents of the stew-pot with the aid of an iron spoon, and sniffing them gingerly at the same time.“Stir it about, Miss, please, so as it won’t stick to the sides,” suggested Hetty; which Ella proceeded to do, thinking to herself the while, that if all other trades failed her, that of a cook would be little to her mind.“Now, Hetty,” she said, “I think this’ll take no harm, staying where it is. When does your father come home? It’s about his time, isn’t it?” as the clock struck the half hour to one.“He should a’ been home before, Miss Ella, else mammy wouldn’t a’ left me and the pot aloned. But there’s a deal to do in the houses, now it’s so cold, a’ seein’ to the fires,”—her father was one of the gardeners—“and maybe Mr Meakins has kept him late. But it’s all right now, Miss, and thank you,” said six-year old Hetty, remembering for the first time to bob her courtesy. “Would you like to wash your hands, and there’s a smut on your cheek? You’ve made it worser,” as Ella involuntarily raised her hand to the indicated spot.“Thank you, Hetty, perhaps I’d—” Ella began, when suddenly the sound of horse’s feet approaching, reminded her of her original errand at the lodge. “There’s the groom—the groom from the Manor,” she said, flying off, forgetful alike of smutty marks and “mammy’s” big apron in her eagerness, and heedless of Hetty’s assurances that she could open the gate, anxiety as to which the little maiden supposed to be the cause of the young lady’s excitement.Ella’s ears had not misled her. A horse was waiting at the gate, but scarcely had she called out to its rider—“You’ve been at the Manor; what message is there?” when a glance upwards told her that she had made some great mistake. It was no groom who sat there, gazing at her in speechless astonishment—it was a gentleman; so much she perceived instantaneously; but this first flash of surprise was as nothing compared with the shock of astonishment which succeeded it when in another half second her eyes told her brain what at first it refused to accept—the rider was her partner—her partnerpar excellencethat is to say, of two nights before at Mrs Belvoir’s dance.But if Ella was surprised, what was the effect on the new-comer of the sudden apparition of the mysterious little personage who had made so much impression on him?Wasit she—“Miss Wyndham,” or was it only a case of extraordinary resemblance? Yet if not Miss Wyndham, who then? He knew the Roses at the lodge, as well as he knew himself—Mrs Rose was the only daughter of one of his own tenants, and though a comely young woman, in no way exceptionally pretty—this girl could be no sister or cousin of hers, he felt sure. Yet again his hasty glance had shown him that she was not in the ordinary attire of a lady; she was half covered by a huge and not over-clean apron, her hair was pushed off her forehead, her face was scorched-looking and a grimy streak crossed it on one side. “Miss Wyndham,” if Miss Wyndham it were, must be playing a part in a comedy, or else—could it be that the girl he had been so struck with wasnota lady; that in some clever way she had inveigled herself in among the smart people at the Manor, and that this was the meaning of her strange, half mysterious, half reticent manner? A curious and by no means agreeable thrill passed through the young man as this last idea drove its predecessors out of his mind with the rapidity of lightning. Hetty meanwhile had run out and was fumbling at the gate. The sight of the child brought Philip back to matters-of-fact.“I will open myself, Hetty,” he said, for the elder girl stood as if transfixed making no effort to help the little one. And in a moment he had dismounted and was leading his horse through the gateway.They both stared at each other for half a second. Ella was the first to speak, though her cheeks glowed more and more as she did so. Happily she had forgotten all about the sooty mark on her cheek.“I beg your pardon for mistaking you,” she said. “I thought you were the groom from—”“I cannot beg your pardon,” interrupted Philip, “for I am absolutely in the dark as to whether I have mistaken you or not. Are you—” but here he hesitated, though the tone of her voice and the manner of her speech had almost satisfied him that his recognition had been correct—“areyou Miss Wyndham, and if so—what in the world—”It was by this time all Ella could do to repress her laughter.“What in the world am I doing here?” she said, finishing his sentence for him. “Did you not ask if you would find me scouring pots and pans if you came to see me? Well—I have been doing something of the kind—witness my apron, and my hands,” staring ruefully at some black streaks on her fingers.“And your cheek, Miss Ella,” interrupted Hetty, understanding the gesture though not the words. “It’s a deal smuttier nor your hands.”Ella’s face grew still more scarlet.“Oh, you horrid little girl,” she exclaimed, “why didn’t you tell me?” and lifting a corner of the apron she began to rub her cheek so indignantly that Sir Philip could scarcely keep his countenance. But his bewilderment and curiosity overcame his amusement.“Then,” he said, for though Hetty’s name for the young lady had vaguely caught his ear, it had not as yet awakened any association, “then I am to conclude youareMiss Wyndham?”“No,” said Ella sharply, for the consciousness of the smut on her face had quite upset her temper, “I’m not, and I never said I was; and why you chose to call me by a name that was not mine I am sure I don’t know. I didn’t know yours, and I don’t now, and you wouldn’t tell it me, but for all that I didn’t call you by an imaginary one.”Sir Philip looked rather taken aback.“When I had the honour of being introduced to you,” he said stiffly, “I think I was told your name was Wyndham?”“I am not responsible for other people’s stupidity,” said Ella. “I have no objection to your knowing who I am. I—”But at this moment little Hetty gave her a tug. “There’s daddy a coming, Miss Ella,” she said. “I see him over there in the long path. May I run to tell him what mammy said?” and hardly waiting for permission, the child set off.

The interview with her father turned out satisfactorily for Madelene. Each was suffering from inward consciousness of having acted to some extent unreasonably, and each felt a kind of unexpressed relief at not being brought to task. Colonel St Quentin’s manner and tone were plainly deprecatory of blame.

“You must not think me weak and foolish for having given in to your aunt, when I had stood out so—well, I suppose I must say—obstinately with you and Ermine,” he said with a slight smile.

“Ermine and I were only too delighted for Ella to have the pleasure of it,” Madelene replied.

“I knew that—I was assured of that,” said her father, and then the subject was allowed to drop.

Ella was looking very demure in her grey linsey-woolsey, waiting beside the tea-table in the library, when the two others joined her. A smile which she could not altogether repress, crossed Ermine’s face as the contrast between her little sister’s present “get-up” and that in which she had last seen her, crossed her mind.

“Oh, well, I’m not sorry to be home again,” she said aloud. “What do you think, Ella? Would you like to have yesterday night over again?”

Ella looked up with a half doubtful questioning in her sweet eyes. Was Ermine chaffing her, or was this veiled sarcasm, or what? But before she had time to form any judgment on the matter, to her surprise Madelene interposed.

“Ella,” she said—she was standing near the fireplace, and her tall figure in its dark winter garb looked very imposing, though her face, had Ella seen it clearly, was gentle and almost touching in its expression—“Ella, my dear,” she said, “I want to say to you now, at once, that I am very sorry I so misjudged you last night, blaming you when you did not deserve it—when indeed youcouldnot have deserved it; for a moment’s reflection might have shown me you could not have come to the Manor unknown to or unapproved of by papa. But I was so astonished that for once, I suppose I lost my head. Will you forget about it, and believe that I am very happy you had the pleasure?”

“Of course,” said Ella. “I often am hasty myself—I never dislike any one for being a little cross,” she went on, smiling. “I’m very glad you liked me to be there. Papa was very kind about it,” she added, unable to repress a little hit at her sister, “he agreed to my goingat oncewhen my godmother proposed it.”

Madelene’s face grew cold again.

“Why could you not stop at the right place, you foolish child?” thought Ermine. But she kept her thoughts to herself—a glance at Madelene had told her that it was best so.

Outwardly, however, things seemed most prosperously smooth.

“Your frock looked lovely, Ella,” said Ermine. “Mélanie will be quite jealous of Jones.”

“And it is really not spoilt at all,” said Ella, eagerly. “But oh, Madelene, that reminds me—I had such a misfortune.”

Miss St Quentin looked up anxiously. To her nature any appeal for sympathy always brought healing on its wings.

“What?” she said, expecting to hear of some trifling accident. Her face expressed real concern when she heard the particulars of the lost shoe.

“We must certainly try to get it back,” she said. “It is pretty sure to have been picked up. Only if any dishonest servant has got hold of it, the buckle would be a temptation; an ignorant person would so easily mistake the paste for diamonds—I will write to Mrs Belvoir to-morrow, Ella—it is too late to-night—and send over a man expressly.”

“Thank you,” said Ella. “But,” she went on, “will she understand? Did she know I was your sister, as I didn’t come with you?”

“Of course,” said Madelene haughtily. “You don’t suppose Ermine and I would have given any cause for gossip. We took care to speak quite naturally the next morning about Aunt Anna having brought you over for a little—it was all Louis Belvoir, who Mistook your name at the first.”

“Oh yes, I see,” said Ella. She seemed on the point of saying more, but her courage failed her.

“I wonder if they know who the man was that I danced that last waltz with,” she said to herself.

Ermine seemed to play into her hands.

“How did you like young Belvoir, by the by, Ella?” she inquired. “He dances well, doesn’t he? What other men did you dance with?”

But Ella was not going to be trotted out, especially not before Madelene, whose eyes, she fancied, and perhaps not without reason, were fixed on her scrutinisingly.

“There were several,” she replied; “I didn’t hear all their names distinctly. Yes, I thought Mr Belvoir danced well, but there were one or two others who danced quite as well.”

“Oh, indeed,” said Ermine. “No one in particular, then?”

“Major Frost was very amusing,” said Ella.

Madelene, who had finished her tea, put down her cup and turned to the door.

“We had better go up stairs and take our things off, Ermine,” she said.

“I am afraid Ella is the reverse of ingenuous,” she said when they had left the library. “Weknowshe danced more with Philip than any one. She is a regular woman of the world in the way she can keep back what she does not choose to tell—it would be only natural for her to ask us who he was, if she really did not know.”

“Oh, Maddie, I don’t think you are fair about her,” said Ermine. “And talking of not being ingenuous—she might accuse us of it when she comes to know him. She will know we must have seen her dancing with him, if she takes the trouble to think it over, and our not mentioning his being there may strike her.”

“Well, it isn’t my doing. I hate mystifications,” said Madelene. “However as Aunt Anna is mixed up in it I suppose it will be all right. But—no, Ermine, I’m afraid Ella is not the sort of wife we should wish for Philip. And I’m afraid of letting myself wish it, lest I should really be influenced by selfish motives, for no doubt it might make things easier.”

“You’re enough to provoke a saint,” said Ermine. “However I don’t suppose either you or I will have much power to ‘make or mar’ in the matter. If it is to be, it will be—so far we haven’t meddled;wedidn’t originate their meeting as they did.”

“People always take refuge in that sort of fatalism when they want to throw off responsibility,” said Madelene. “I don’t believe in fatality about marriages any more than about anything else. ButIshall not interfere, I am far too uncertain of its being a good thing for Philip.”

“Maddie has had an Indian letter, and she has got a fit of extra conscientiousness in consequence,” thought Ermine. “If I were Bernard, I don’t think I’d stand it.”

And yet as she looked at her sister, and saw the gentle sadness in her eyes, and noted the increasing signs of endurance and uncomplaining patience in the delicate features, a sort of rush of tenderness came over her. No one better deserved to be happy than her own sweet Madelene, she said to herself.

The evening passed peacefully. Colonel St Quentin was pleased to have his daughters with him again, and pleased too with himself for feeling so much more cordial and affectionate than heretofore towards his youngest child. And Madelene was pleased too to see him so, for jealousy formed no part of her nature, though her exaggerated conscientiousness and self-questioning sometimes took the appearance of suspiciousness of others. Ella’s quick eyes detected her elder sister’s satisfaction at her father’s kindlier tone, and she felt puzzled by it.

“She does seem as if she wanted papa and me to get on better together, after all,” she thought, and the idea softened her own manner in turn. Besides this, she was, though she would on no account have confessed it, both tired and sleepy; the unusual excitement, more than actual fatigue had told upon her, and she was not sorry when Ermine, openly acknowledging that she was quite ready to go to bed, proposed that they should all say good-night.

“It’s quite disgraceful to be so done up after such a very mild amount of dissipation,” she said laughingly. “Philip would make great fun of us. He is coming over to-morrow, Maddie, you know.”

“Yes, papa says Aunt Anna left a message from him to tell us so,” said Madelene thoughtlessly.

Ella pricked up her ears at this.

“How could—” she began, but something in the expression of her elder sister’s face made her stop short.

“Ah,” she reflected, “Madelene said that by mistake. They didn’t want me to know that precious cousin oftheirswas coming. I shall hate him for being their cousin and not mine—only he is dear godmother’s grandson, and I should like him for that. Godmother must have had a letter from him while I was there, I suppose. She might have told me of it.”

And a feeling of resentment to Lady Cheynes too, mingled with her indignation against her sisters. Her “good-night” was correspondingly cold, but they did not seem to notice it.

“I will write a note to Mrs Belvoir to-night, Ella,” said Madelene in a low voice, as they were leaving the room, “to have it ready for to-morrow morning, so that one of the grooms can take it over quite early and wait for an answer.”

“Thank you,” said Ella, and for the moment she felt really obliged. The lost slipper was weighing a good deal on her mind, and she began to think that after all she would feel rather foolish if obliged to confess to her godmother how she had lost it.

“She will certainly say I should have found it out before I got into the carriage, but I quite thought it was among the rugs—and Jones looked herself for me, this morning. I think it must have slipped off just as I stepped in and rolled out before they shut the door.”

And her dreams were haunted by the slipper. She thought Madelene came down to breakfast next morning with it tied on to her head as an ornament, and that it suddenly skipped on to the floor all of itself, and became a wonderful white satin chariot which careered round the room drawn by six cats, while on the box sat her partner in her last waltz at the Manor, shouting at the top of his voice that he was going to take a note to Mrs Belvoir first thing in the morning, and to wait for an answer. And these words “wait for an answer,” seemed to mingle themselves fantastically with all the consciousness of her sleep. Or perhaps it seemed so to her, for they were the first that fell on her ears as she began to awake next morning. The door was opening and some one just entering was speaking to another person outside.

“Yes,” said the voice—it was old Hester’s—“wait for an answer—be sure to tell him.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Ella. “What is it about waiting for an answer?”

“It’s the message for the groom, who’s going to the Manor, Miss Ella,” Hester replied. “Miss St. Quentin gave me the note last night, and I was telling Stevens. She’s so sorry for you to be uneasy about the shoe—‘taking off the pleasure of her first little treat, poor child,’ was her words to me, Miss Ella.”

“It’s very kind of her,” said Ella sleepily, with again the return upon herself as to her judgment of her sister. Suddenly a new idea struck her. “Hester,” she said, “what sort of person is Sir Philip Cheynes? Is he nice, or is he conceited and stuck-up, and—flirting, you know—that sort of a man?”

“Bless you, no, Miss Ella, not as ever I’ve heard tell. What’s put such a notion in your head? If he was stuck-up, he’d not be so to his own cousins; and he does think all the world of them, that he does. And as for being a flirting gentleman, he’d be uncommon clever to get Miss Maddie or Miss Ermie to join in such like nonsense, though by what I hear sometimes, young ladies—and young ladies who think a deal of themselves too—is not so partickler as they might be, now a days. I don’t hold with that tennis-playing, Miss Ella, and all that sort of apeing gentlemen, as seems the fashion.”

Ella laughed.

“Tennis is very dull,Ithink. I shouldn’t like to spend several hours a day at it,” she said.

“Sir Philip is evidently a prig of the first water,” she decided mentally. “But if so, he’s not likely to admireme, so why do they want to keep me out of his way, as I see they do? And they have got god mother to join them in it for some reason.”

Ella’s inward indignation sent her down stairs to breakfast in anything but a genial mood. And, as her moods were very apt to do, it found its expression in her outer woman.

“You do look so grim, Ella,” said Ermine. “I am so tired of that linsey-woolsey frock of yours—couldn’t you put a bit of scarlet about yourself somewhere? Even a red tucker would be an improvement.”

Madelene glanced at her younger sister as Ermine spoke.

“You might wear your sailor serge every morning now, I think, Ella,” she said. “That frock is getting shabby and it is a dingy shade. You remember we couldn’t get the grey we wanted. About Christmas time too, one likes to see people looking bright.”

Ella surveyed her garments with a half indifferent air that was rather irritating.

“I think it does very well,” she replied. “Even aunty thought two new winter frocks enough. I don’t see that it matters so long as it is warm, and indeed to tell the truth, I like this better than my Sunday frock; it is so clumsily made.”

Madelene said no more.

“Every step forward seems followed by two backwards with her,” she reflected. “Ermine had better not build any castles in the air about her and Philip—if she had the slightest suspicion thatweshould like such a thing, it would, I do believe, make Ella detest him.”

“I have sent over to the Manor, Ella,” she said as she rose from the breakfast-table; “the groom should be back by half-past twelve or so, as Mrs Belvoir is sure to be at home. I am sure you are feeling anxious about the poor little slipper.”

“I am,” said Ella. “Thank you, Madelene.”

And indeed it was partly distress of mind about the lost property which was making Ella indisposed this morning to take a roseate view of life.

“The weather seems really settling in for frost,” said Ermine. “After the rain it will make the roads very slippery. I hope the frost will last till after Christmas, now it has begun. I wish I could go a good long walk this morning, but I fear we mustn’t think of it—eh, Maddie?”

“No—there are arrears of things to see to even after being away only two days,” Miss St Quentin replied. “You might get Philip to take you a walk after luncheon, when I go to sit with papa.”

“And Ella too,” Ermine added. “Would you like a nice long walk, Ella? It would be a pleasant variety to have an escort for once.”

“No, thank you,” said Ella, stiffly, though in her heart she thought Ermine much kinder than her elder sister. “I don’t care for walking in the afternoon. I shall go out after I’ve finished my practising this morning.”

“Not alone, Ella?” said Madelene; “or at least if you do go alone, it will not be further than the grounds, I hope?”

“No,” said Ella, “I don’t mean to leave the grounds.”

She spoke more amiably—for this sort of authority or interference on her sister’s part did not irritate her, as it might have done some girls. She resented nothing which gave her the sensation of being considered a person of importance.

Twelve o’clock found her walking briskly down the drive which led to the principal entrance. The sharp clear air stimulated her nerves pleasantly; she felt high-spirited and almost happy. As Madelene had said truly, Coombesthorpe had a beauty of its own in every season.

“It is lovely,” thought Ella, as she looked around her, down across the gently sloping lawns to where the first murmur of water told of the stream pursuing its way, lonely now, without the merry companionship of its summer friends, the birds and gnats and butterflies; not to speak of the many quaint creatures who found their homes on its banks. “I wonder where they all go to?” she went on. “I suppose lots of them are asleep. I wish I knew more about country things. Ermine is so clever about them. I could learn all sorts of things from her if I was sure she—they—wanted to like me—”

Then her gaze passed on from the thicket concealing the brook, up again to the hills rising beyond. There was snow on the higher peaks; to be guessed at rather than seen, for a thin wintry haze made hills and clouds melt into each other. Ella shivered a little.

“Fancy living up on those hills,” she thought. “And they say there are cottages there where the people stay all the winter. The road to the Manor passes round the foot of them. I wonder how soon the groom will be back. Oh, I do hope he will bring the shoe.” She had forgotten about it for the moment; the recollection made her hasten her steps. She would ask the woman at the lodge if possibly the groom had already returned; if not, she would walk a little way down the road, which for some distance beyond these first gates remained a private one, in hopes of meeting him, for it would be easy to ask if he was bringing back a parcel or only a note.

There seemed no one stirring about the lodge when she got there, which was unusual, as the couple who lived in it were the proud possessors of two very pretty children, one or other or both of whom were generally to be seen peeping out of the doorway when any one came by.

“They seem all asleep,” thought Ella, who had long ago made great friends with the little family. “I hope they’re not ill.”

She made her way to the door as she spoke, and tapped gently, at the same time endeavouring to “lift the latch,” like Red Riding Hood of old, and let herself in. But the door resisted; it was evidently fastened inside.

Ella tapped more loudly, and almost before she finished doing so, a faint sound of weeping caught her ear, but no reply came to her knocks.

“Is any one in?” she called out, beginning to feel a little uneasy. “Willie, Hetty, who is it crying? Mrs Rose, are you there?”

A sort of movement inside, sounding like the slow, enforcedly deliberate way in which a little, short-legged child gets down from a chair, followed by a pattering of small feet across the stone floor, became audible. Then a doleful voice replied to her questions:

“I’m all aloned. I’m Hetty. I dunno who you is. Mammy’s took Willie in Master Crocker’s waggin to doctor’s. Willie’s eyes is bad. And the pot won’t budge and the dinner’s spilin.”

Then ensued a louder burst of bitter wailing.

Ella rapped again impatiently.

“Let me in then, you silly child,” she cried. “I’m Ella—Miss Ella from the hall. You know my voice, surely, Hetty. I’m not a wolf,” she added, half laughing.

Thus adjured, Hetty cautiously approached.

“Miss Ella,” she said in a tone of relief. “I’ll try to loose the door, Miss, but its drefful hard. Mother locked it outside and pushed the key in under the door. I weren’t to open it till daddy comed home, but mammy didn’t know Miss Ella’d be coming,” she added, as if half in vindication to herself of her departure from mammy’s injunctions.

“Then do the same again,” said Ella. “Push the key under the door and I’ll open it outside. Your little hands can’t turn it.”

Hetty gave a sort of grunt of satisfaction at the brilliant idea. The key was pushed through, and in another moment, Ella stood on the open threshold. Poor Hetty’s face was swollen with crying and scorched by the fire, and her first greeting to Ella was a fresh burst of tears.

“’Tis the dinner—daddy’s dinner,” she exclaimed, and sure enough a rather ominous smell of burning drew Ella’s attention to the fire. Quick as thought the girl pulled off her thick jacket, tossed aside her fur cap—for the kitchen felt very hot after the keen clear air outside—and stood for a moment investigating the formidable-looking pot, which was the cause of Hetty’s woe.

“Give me a towel or something, Hetty. I don’t want to burn myself.”

Hetty stuffed a substantial cloth into her visitor’s hands.

“And a apern, Miss, or you’ll smutty your nice gown. Here’s one of mammy’s.”

Ella took the hint and tied it on, and well for the linsey-woolsey that she did so, as it was not without various black streaks on the vicarious apron that she succeeded in safely depositing “daddy’s dinner” on the hearth-stone.

“Goodness! how heavy pots are,” she exclaimed, “and how the fire does scorch one’s face—even a little one like that. I don’t think the dinner’smuchburnt, Hetty,” she went on, carefully investigating the contents of the stew-pot with the aid of an iron spoon, and sniffing them gingerly at the same time.

“Stir it about, Miss, please, so as it won’t stick to the sides,” suggested Hetty; which Ella proceeded to do, thinking to herself the while, that if all other trades failed her, that of a cook would be little to her mind.

“Now, Hetty,” she said, “I think this’ll take no harm, staying where it is. When does your father come home? It’s about his time, isn’t it?” as the clock struck the half hour to one.

“He should a’ been home before, Miss Ella, else mammy wouldn’t a’ left me and the pot aloned. But there’s a deal to do in the houses, now it’s so cold, a’ seein’ to the fires,”—her father was one of the gardeners—“and maybe Mr Meakins has kept him late. But it’s all right now, Miss, and thank you,” said six-year old Hetty, remembering for the first time to bob her courtesy. “Would you like to wash your hands, and there’s a smut on your cheek? You’ve made it worser,” as Ella involuntarily raised her hand to the indicated spot.

“Thank you, Hetty, perhaps I’d—” Ella began, when suddenly the sound of horse’s feet approaching, reminded her of her original errand at the lodge. “There’s the groom—the groom from the Manor,” she said, flying off, forgetful alike of smutty marks and “mammy’s” big apron in her eagerness, and heedless of Hetty’s assurances that she could open the gate, anxiety as to which the little maiden supposed to be the cause of the young lady’s excitement.

Ella’s ears had not misled her. A horse was waiting at the gate, but scarcely had she called out to its rider—

“You’ve been at the Manor; what message is there?” when a glance upwards told her that she had made some great mistake. It was no groom who sat there, gazing at her in speechless astonishment—it was a gentleman; so much she perceived instantaneously; but this first flash of surprise was as nothing compared with the shock of astonishment which succeeded it when in another half second her eyes told her brain what at first it refused to accept—the rider was her partner—her partnerpar excellencethat is to say, of two nights before at Mrs Belvoir’s dance.

But if Ella was surprised, what was the effect on the new-comer of the sudden apparition of the mysterious little personage who had made so much impression on him?Wasit she—“Miss Wyndham,” or was it only a case of extraordinary resemblance? Yet if not Miss Wyndham, who then? He knew the Roses at the lodge, as well as he knew himself—Mrs Rose was the only daughter of one of his own tenants, and though a comely young woman, in no way exceptionally pretty—this girl could be no sister or cousin of hers, he felt sure. Yet again his hasty glance had shown him that she was not in the ordinary attire of a lady; she was half covered by a huge and not over-clean apron, her hair was pushed off her forehead, her face was scorched-looking and a grimy streak crossed it on one side. “Miss Wyndham,” if Miss Wyndham it were, must be playing a part in a comedy, or else—could it be that the girl he had been so struck with wasnota lady; that in some clever way she had inveigled herself in among the smart people at the Manor, and that this was the meaning of her strange, half mysterious, half reticent manner? A curious and by no means agreeable thrill passed through the young man as this last idea drove its predecessors out of his mind with the rapidity of lightning. Hetty meanwhile had run out and was fumbling at the gate. The sight of the child brought Philip back to matters-of-fact.

“I will open myself, Hetty,” he said, for the elder girl stood as if transfixed making no effort to help the little one. And in a moment he had dismounted and was leading his horse through the gateway.

They both stared at each other for half a second. Ella was the first to speak, though her cheeks glowed more and more as she did so. Happily she had forgotten all about the sooty mark on her cheek.

“I beg your pardon for mistaking you,” she said. “I thought you were the groom from—”

“I cannot beg your pardon,” interrupted Philip, “for I am absolutely in the dark as to whether I have mistaken you or not. Are you—” but here he hesitated, though the tone of her voice and the manner of her speech had almost satisfied him that his recognition had been correct—“areyou Miss Wyndham, and if so—what in the world—”

It was by this time all Ella could do to repress her laughter.

“What in the world am I doing here?” she said, finishing his sentence for him. “Did you not ask if you would find me scouring pots and pans if you came to see me? Well—I have been doing something of the kind—witness my apron, and my hands,” staring ruefully at some black streaks on her fingers.

“And your cheek, Miss Ella,” interrupted Hetty, understanding the gesture though not the words. “It’s a deal smuttier nor your hands.”

Ella’s face grew still more scarlet.

“Oh, you horrid little girl,” she exclaimed, “why didn’t you tell me?” and lifting a corner of the apron she began to rub her cheek so indignantly that Sir Philip could scarcely keep his countenance. But his bewilderment and curiosity overcame his amusement.

“Then,” he said, for though Hetty’s name for the young lady had vaguely caught his ear, it had not as yet awakened any association, “then I am to conclude youareMiss Wyndham?”

“No,” said Ella sharply, for the consciousness of the smut on her face had quite upset her temper, “I’m not, and I never said I was; and why you chose to call me by a name that was not mine I am sure I don’t know. I didn’t know yours, and I don’t now, and you wouldn’t tell it me, but for all that I didn’t call you by an imaginary one.”

Sir Philip looked rather taken aback.

“When I had the honour of being introduced to you,” he said stiffly, “I think I was told your name was Wyndham?”

“I am not responsible for other people’s stupidity,” said Ella. “I have no objection to your knowing who I am. I—”

But at this moment little Hetty gave her a tug. “There’s daddy a coming, Miss Ella,” she said. “I see him over there in the long path. May I run to tell him what mammy said?” and hardly waiting for permission, the child set off.

Chapter Thirteen.Ermine Misses the Fun.A mist seemed suddenly to roll away from Sir Philip’s brain.“Miss Ella,” he repeated, with a sort of gasp; “you don’t mean to say—you can’t be little Ella St Quentin?”“Why not?” Ella retorted, sharply still—the “little” was unfortunate. “I am Ella St Quentin and I have never pretended to be any one else; but at my age people are not spoken of as if they were three or four years old.”“I beg your pardon,” said Philip.“And,” she went on, “I don’t understand why you should speak of me in that way at all. I don’t know whoyouare.”But Philip did not at once reply—his thoughts for the moment were pursuing another train. “I can’t make out,” he said, speaking more to himself than to her, “why they all mystified us. They must have known we were dancing together—Madelene, Ermine, certainly, and my grandmother must have—was it withheryou came to the Belvoirs’?” he exclaimed suddenly. “Wasthatthe reason of Granny’s strange freak?”In her turn, Ella’s face looked first astonished, then illumined.“Are you speaking of Lady Cheynes, my godmother?” she said. “Then are you Sir Philip Cheynes? Oh, how fearfully stupid of me not to know! But,” and her bewilderment took the same direction as his, “why did none of them introduce us properly? Of course I never thought of you being here; I understood till yesterday that you were up in the north somewhere. I did not hear your surname at all, and I was not sure ifyouwere ‘Sir Philip,’ though I remembered that much. If I had thought of it—it is not such a very common name—but I just never thought ofyou, of my godmother’s grandson, at all.”“I see,” Philip replied; “and they all lent themselves to the—‘mystification,’ that is plain. I confess I don’t see much point in it.”He spoke stiffly, but he was not resenting it onher—indeed he had no reason to do so, but when people are vexed they are not always reasonable—so Ella remained gracious. Suddenly his eyes fell on her quaint figure—she had forgotten all about her personal travesty by this time—and a half dubious, half quizzical smile lighted up his face as if in spite of himself.“It seems mystifications all round,” he said. “It is, to say the least, an extraordinary coincidence that I should light upon you like this, all perfectly got up in the Aschen-puttel style.”“You are very,”—“impertinent” was on the tip of Ella’s tongue, but she suppressed it. “I daresay he has heard of all my iniquities from Madelene. I am not going to have him endorse her opinion of me,” she thought, and a very charming smile stole over her face, as, colouring again a little, she replied gently, “You are right. It isveryqueer that we should have met again like this,” and she went on to explain Hetty’s domestic tribulations.“It was most kind of you,” said Philip warmly. “But,” as at that moment the little girl and her father joined them, “don’t you think you had better return to your own character now? It is very cold, too. Rose, you mustn’t let Hetty keep house alone in this style, my good fellow,” he went on to the gardener; “the child might have fallen into the fire and been badly burnt.”It had never happened before, and never should again, the man assured him civilly. He had not known of his wife’s absence; she had, so Hetty had been charged to explain, been tempted to take advantage of the unexpected chance of getting her boy to the doctor’s; and by the invariable rule of contrary, Rose himself had been detained at work much later than usual. While the gardener was thus explaining matters, Ella had run in to the lodge, and a moment later reappeared in hat and jacket, minus the apron and the smuts.“Good-bye, Hetty,” she said, and “good-bye Sir Philip Cheynes,” she added, turning to him. “I am going a little further, towards the outer gate.”Philip looked at her.“Will you not take your constitutional in another direction?” he said quietly. “There is—I have something to say to you, which I may not find another opportunity for.”Ella looked surprised and a little startled. His tone was solemn. Was he going after all to make out that she deserved lecturing for her innocent deception? But her expression changed to relief when he went on, Rose and Hetty having by this time retired—“It is not exactly something to say; it is rather something togiveyou. If you don’t mind walking beside me while I lead my horse, I will explain. A—a piece of property of yours has come into my possession. I had no expectation of course of seeing you here, but I have the—article in my pocket, because, to tell the truth, I was going to show it to my cousins and consult them about it. I thought it probable they had noticed the shoes ‘Miss Wyndham’ wore the other evening if they were the peculiar-looking ones in question, and that they would be able to tell me where to find her.”Ella had had hard work to keep down her impatience during this long explanation, and when he came to the word “shoe” her eyes danced with delight.“Oh,” she exclaimed, “if you have found my slipper I can’t thank you enough. You don’t know how miserable I have been about it,” and she went on to tell how her anxiety to hear if it had been found had brought her to the lodge that morning. “It must be mine,” she went on; “it is too impossible that such a queer accident should have happened to any one else the same evening. But please let me see it, that I may be quite sure.”Philip drew a little parcel out of his pocket and held it out to Ella, who eagerly unwrapped it. Yes—there it lay—the dainty little old-world slipper, with infinite pathos about its mellow satin and quaint buckle to any one who knew its history.Ella looked inclined to kiss it.“Oh, how pleased I am,” she said. “Do tell me where you found it and all about it—and how odd it was that you should have noticed the slippers I had on and known it was mine.”Sir Philip looked at her quizzically.“I must take your word for it, I suppose, that itisyours,” he said. “By rights, you know, you should try it on, at least after Madelene and Ermine have done so.”“What nonsense,” Ella exclaimed. “You are not in earnest?”It was not till some time afterwards that she understood what he had meant.“I can show you the fellow to it, if you like,” she added.“Well—perhaps that would do as well,” he agreed, looking much amused.“And as for trying it on, thatwouldn’tconvince you,” she said after a moment’s reflection, “for they’re too big for me. They weren’t made for me—”“Scarcely, unless—you are even more of a fairy personage than I have suspected. The slippers must be thirty years old at least. If you were grown-up thirty years ago, you look young for your age,” he said.Ella laughed.“Yes, I see,” she answered. “But, by the by, I wonder you never saw them before. They belonged to your sis—no, she couldn’t have been your sister—what was she to you, then, Clarice Cheynes?” and she glanced up in his face with a little frown of perplexity on her own.A light broke over Philip’s.“They werehers!” he exclaimed, “and poor granny disinterred them for you to dance in!”“I am her godchild,” Ella replied, rearing her head a little as she spoke.“Of course. I only meant, what I am sure you think too, that it was very good of her. People are sometimes more selfish about feelings of that kind than about anything else. No—I never saw the slippers before, but I know that granny has a room where she treasures up all the little possessions of my aunt—who never was my aunt—Clarice.”“Did she die before you were born then?” asked Ella.“Yes—she died the year my father and mother were married, and I was not their eldest child,” said Sir Philip, “though all the others died as babies.”They were near the house by this time. Ella looked up dubiously.“Perhaps you will get on your horse again now,” she said, “and ride up to the door. My sisters are expecting you, I know—perhaps you will tell them of having met me, and found out who I was.”“Will you not tell them yourself?” he said.“No, I am going round the other way, behind the house. I have no longer any interest in watching for the groom,” Ella replied, “and I would rather you told my sisters, please.” She hesitated a little—“They, Madelene, might be a little annoyed, at—at my having been at the lodge, and all that.”Philip looked surprised.“I don’t think that is at all the sort of thing to vex Maddie,” he said. “Indeed it is rather in Ermine’s own line, I should say.”But Ella still looked doubtful, and hurried off, half smiling, but with a gesture that implied her preference for not making one at the forthcoming interview.Philip mounted and rode up,en règle, to the door, where, in answer to his inquiries, he was told that Miss St Quentin was at home and in the library.There, sure enough, he found his elder cousin. She started up as he came in.“Oh, Philip, that’s right,” she exclaimed. “We were just hoping you would come before luncheon. It is so nice to have you at home again,” she added affectionately.“It is nice tobehome again,” he replied, as he went up to the fire and stood warming his hands at the blaze. Then there fell a little silence.“Madelene,” said Sir Philip at last, “you haven’t yet introduced me to you sister Ella.”“No,” Miss St Quentin replied, “there has not yet been any opportunity for my doing so,” she was beginning, when she suddenly and unaccountably stopped. “If you will ring, Philip,” she said, “I will send to tell both Ermine and Ella to come.”But Philip did not move towards the bell.“I don’t want them to come just yet,” he said. “I want to talk to you a little first. And besides, Ella is out.”“Ella out,” repeated Madelene, looking up and changing colour slightly. Her manner seemed rather constrained and nervous. “How do you know?” her glance at him said.Philip smiled.“Yes,” he said, “I know what you are looking so ‘funny’ about, Maddie, as we used to say when we were children. You cannot sham the very least bit in the world; you never could, you know. Yes—I have met Ella, and the mystification is at an end. But by Jove what it ever began for, I cannot imagine. Will you not enlighten me?”Miss St Quentin grew more and more uneasy.“No,” she said, “I can’t. It—it was a freak of Ermine’s, and Aunt Anna took it up and joined in it, soIcould not oppose it, though to tell you the truth I never liked it. Of courseat the beginningit was altogether accidental; we had no idea—Ermie and I, I mean—of Aunt Anna’s getting papa to let Ella go to the ball—we had done our utmost to persuade him, but he wouldn’t. And then your being there was unexpected—and they made a muddle of Ella’s name: all that came about of itself.”“Yes,” said Philip. “I see. But I see, too, how cleverly you all—no, not so much you, Maddie—joined to keep up the mistake, though upon my word I can’t see any point in it. I cannot find fault with my grandmother, but I shall have it out with Ermine.”Madelene looked distressed; she saw that Philip was on the point of being angry.“It is my clumsiness,” she said. “If you had seen Ermine first it would have been all right. She would have made you see it differently—but don’t be vexed about it, Philip. I do beg you not to be. I dosowant to have no more worries in which Ella is concerned. I am so tired of misunderstandings and all that kind of bother.”Philip took her up at once.“Have you had many bothers, poor Maddie?” he said. “Is she—is Ella not—not nice and gentle with you?”Madelene felt as if she could have bitten her tongue off for having spoken so ill-advisedly.“No, of course I didn’t mean to say anything against Ella,” she replied quickly. “You shouldn’t take one up so, Philip. It makes me think Ermine was right.”“Right in what? Maddie, I am tired of all these half-speeches and cross-purposes. And I foresee I shall very likely have a quarrel with Ermine if you won’t speak out. What was she right in, and why did she want me to make your young sister’s acquaintance without knowing who she was.”“She thought—as it had happened so—it was not our doing at first, remember—she thought you would like Ella better, judge her for herself as it were, if you met her as a stranger. Ermie has fancied you were a little prepossessedagainstElla, and, I think,” Miss St Quentin went on, consideringly, “Ithink, perhaps she blames herself a little for its being so. You remember—that day when Ella first arrived—Ermine had been really hardly fair about her.”Philip sat listening.“Well?” he said, after waiting as if for his cousin to continue.“That’s all,” said Madelene. “It really is, Philip. I can’t tell you any more of what Ermine thinks or doesn’t think, and as it is, I didn’t want to tell you this. You might have treated it, I do think, as a simple little piece of fun. But now that I have said so much, I trust you to make no to-do about it.”“I shall have it out with granny,” remarked Philip; “but that’s our own affair, hers and mine.” But he said no more about quarrelling with Ermine.After a while he looked up and related to Madelene how he and Ella had met. A variety of expressions crossed Madelene’s face as he spoke.“I wish you had not met her for the first time—”“But it wasn’t the first time,” Philip interrupted.“Well—you know what I mean—the first time athome, in that extraordinary guise. She must have looked comical,” said Madelene, laughing however. “She is very impulsive.”“Impressionable, I should say,” said Philip. “And very warm-hearted. I like to see that sort of impulsiveness,” he added heartily, watching Madelene’s face rather closely the while.Again a slightly uneasy look stole over it.“Yes,” she said, “it was kind, thoroughly kind of her to help poor Hetty.”But even in this cordial praise there was a suggestion of reserve which did not escape Philip.“Cross-purposes. They’re all at cross-purposes,” he thought, “and I’m afraid Maddie’s in a mood for a good long ride on her hobby-horse at present. Madelene,” he said suddenly after some moments silence, “you’ve had a letter from Bernard lately. I know you have, for he wrote to me by the same mail.”“In that case I need not give you any news, as you will have heard it all direct,” Miss St Quentin replied dryly.“Come now, Maddie, I know what that means. You don’t want to talk about him. Is there no change then—do you see no prospect of any?”“None at all,” Madelene replied, in a voice which she strove to make as expressionless as possible.“It’s rather hard upon Omar, I must say,” said Philip; and if his object were to rouse his cousin, he succeeded.“Did I ever say it wasn’t hard on him?” she exclaimed. “Is it my fault? Have I left undoneanythingto make him give it up?”“I don’t say you have. I don’t say that in that way you are to blame,” said Philip quietly; “always allowing that the obstaclesareas insuperable as you make out.”“They are more so—worse and worse,” said Madelene, with a rather wintry smile.“Then you will forbid his coming home, as he can now, I suppose?”“I have no right to do so, but if he does, I—”The rest of her sentence was left to the imagination, for at that moment the door opened, and Ermine, followed by Ella, made her appearance.Ermine gave no one time to feel awkward.“It is too bad of you, Philip, and of you, Ella, too,” she said laughing, “to have balked me of my fun. It would have been too lovely to see you both looking so astonished.”“I am not very fond of looking ridiculous for the amusement of my friends, though I would do a good deal to oblige you, Ermine,” said Sir Philip dryly.Ella’s eyes sparkled with satisfaction. She would not like Sir Philip Cheynes to speak toherin that tone, she said to herself. But Ermine did not seem to mind in the least.“I can stand your withering speeches, my dear boy,” she said coolly. “It was great fun all the same, and Aunt Anna enjoyed it as much as I did. You can have it out with her, if you like, when you go home.”“I intend to do so,” he replied.Ella stood glancing from one to the other with a rather comical look of perplexity on her pretty face. They seemed on very free and easy terms, these sisters of hers with their cousin. Somehow she had not quite realised it, and it surprised her a little. She had never seen anything quite of the same kind before. It was not flirtation, and yet—she was not by any means sure but that the brother and sisterly love covered some deeper and tenderer feeling, and she watched and listened with peculiar curiosity. Madelene, she observed, looked up with some anxiety when she heard the bandying of words between Ermine and her cousin.“Philip,” she said half reproachfully in a low voice—he was standing near her—“you promised me?”Sir Philip turned, with the smile which was one of his charms.“Don’t be afraid, Maddie,” he said almost tenderly, it seemed to Ella. “Ermine, my dear, we must not evenplayat quarrelling; it troubles dear old Mad.”“Shall we kiss and be friends then—eh, Phil?” said Ermine saucily; and when Sir Philip began something about taking her at her word, and she ensconced herself defiantly behind her elder sister’s chair, Madelene laughed with hearty pleasure, her whole face lighted up with satisfaction at seeing that there was no real danger of misunderstanding between the two.“I have it,” said Ella to herself. “It isn’t Ermine herself so much. It is Madelene who wants Philip for her;thatexplains the keeping me out of his way when I first came, and all the rest of is. I wonder if my godmother wishes it too? Yet the trick the other night can hardly have been on that account. I don’t see any object in it. I suppose it was just a freak of Ermine’s, and that Madelene and my godmother too gave in to her. Ermineisso spoilt.”But she was interrupted in these wise and profound cogitations. Ermine suddenly gave an exclamation.“Oh dear,” she said. “I am forgetting to give you this note from Mrs Belvoir. I met James with it as I was crossing the hall.”“A note only—no parcel,” said Madelene in a tone of disappointment. “I am so sorry, Ella,” she went on after running her eyes down the two or three hurried lines which the envelope contained. “I am so sorry. Mrs Belvoir knows nothing of the—of your lost property. I am so sorry for you, dear.”A pleasant light spread over her cousin’s face as he caught the last words. They seemed to assure him of Madelene’s kindliness and sympathy. Ella too was touched by them.“About the shoe, you mean,” she said. “Oh, Madelene, I was just going to tell you. I am not surprised or disappointed for,”—here she glanced at Philip—“won’t you tell them how it was?” she went on, half shyly; “I don’t think I heard quite exactly how or when you happened to find it.”“Youfound it! Phil found it! oh, how lovely!” cried Ermine. “Have you got it in your pocket, Philip, or were you afraid of sitting down upon it and smashing it?”Philip frowned a little.“Out with it,” said Ermine, “then—what should you do then?—we’ll have to skip the herald part of the business. Go down on your knees—isn’t that it?—and present it first to Maddie and then to me. Of coursewecan’t get it on, and then you summon—”Philip began to look distinctly annoyed; Ella, notwithstanding her usual quickness, seemed merely bewildered.“I have not got it,” said Sir Philip; “of course I returned it at once to its rightful owner.”“I have got it,” said Ella. “It is up stairs with its fellow. Sir Philip gave it to me when we met. Would you mind telling where you found it?”“It was just outside the hall door at the Manor,” the young man replied. “I was standing there not long after my last dance with—withMiss Wyndham,” he added with a little smile, “and saw it lying—the buckle gleaming in the moonlight.”“Likeglass” interrupted Ermine; “dear me, you are quite poetical, Philip. It must have been that time you went to catch some friends of yours whom you wanted to say good-night to before they left.”“Yes,” said Philip, simply, “it was.”And Ella fixed her brown eyes on him as he spoke.

A mist seemed suddenly to roll away from Sir Philip’s brain.

“Miss Ella,” he repeated, with a sort of gasp; “you don’t mean to say—you can’t be little Ella St Quentin?”

“Why not?” Ella retorted, sharply still—the “little” was unfortunate. “I am Ella St Quentin and I have never pretended to be any one else; but at my age people are not spoken of as if they were three or four years old.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Philip.

“And,” she went on, “I don’t understand why you should speak of me in that way at all. I don’t know whoyouare.”

But Philip did not at once reply—his thoughts for the moment were pursuing another train. “I can’t make out,” he said, speaking more to himself than to her, “why they all mystified us. They must have known we were dancing together—Madelene, Ermine, certainly, and my grandmother must have—was it withheryou came to the Belvoirs’?” he exclaimed suddenly. “Wasthatthe reason of Granny’s strange freak?”

In her turn, Ella’s face looked first astonished, then illumined.

“Are you speaking of Lady Cheynes, my godmother?” she said. “Then are you Sir Philip Cheynes? Oh, how fearfully stupid of me not to know! But,” and her bewilderment took the same direction as his, “why did none of them introduce us properly? Of course I never thought of you being here; I understood till yesterday that you were up in the north somewhere. I did not hear your surname at all, and I was not sure ifyouwere ‘Sir Philip,’ though I remembered that much. If I had thought of it—it is not such a very common name—but I just never thought ofyou, of my godmother’s grandson, at all.”

“I see,” Philip replied; “and they all lent themselves to the—‘mystification,’ that is plain. I confess I don’t see much point in it.”

He spoke stiffly, but he was not resenting it onher—indeed he had no reason to do so, but when people are vexed they are not always reasonable—so Ella remained gracious. Suddenly his eyes fell on her quaint figure—she had forgotten all about her personal travesty by this time—and a half dubious, half quizzical smile lighted up his face as if in spite of himself.

“It seems mystifications all round,” he said. “It is, to say the least, an extraordinary coincidence that I should light upon you like this, all perfectly got up in the Aschen-puttel style.”

“You are very,”—“impertinent” was on the tip of Ella’s tongue, but she suppressed it. “I daresay he has heard of all my iniquities from Madelene. I am not going to have him endorse her opinion of me,” she thought, and a very charming smile stole over her face, as, colouring again a little, she replied gently, “You are right. It isveryqueer that we should have met again like this,” and she went on to explain Hetty’s domestic tribulations.

“It was most kind of you,” said Philip warmly. “But,” as at that moment the little girl and her father joined them, “don’t you think you had better return to your own character now? It is very cold, too. Rose, you mustn’t let Hetty keep house alone in this style, my good fellow,” he went on to the gardener; “the child might have fallen into the fire and been badly burnt.”

It had never happened before, and never should again, the man assured him civilly. He had not known of his wife’s absence; she had, so Hetty had been charged to explain, been tempted to take advantage of the unexpected chance of getting her boy to the doctor’s; and by the invariable rule of contrary, Rose himself had been detained at work much later than usual. While the gardener was thus explaining matters, Ella had run in to the lodge, and a moment later reappeared in hat and jacket, minus the apron and the smuts.

“Good-bye, Hetty,” she said, and “good-bye Sir Philip Cheynes,” she added, turning to him. “I am going a little further, towards the outer gate.”

Philip looked at her.

“Will you not take your constitutional in another direction?” he said quietly. “There is—I have something to say to you, which I may not find another opportunity for.”

Ella looked surprised and a little startled. His tone was solemn. Was he going after all to make out that she deserved lecturing for her innocent deception? But her expression changed to relief when he went on, Rose and Hetty having by this time retired—

“It is not exactly something to say; it is rather something togiveyou. If you don’t mind walking beside me while I lead my horse, I will explain. A—a piece of property of yours has come into my possession. I had no expectation of course of seeing you here, but I have the—article in my pocket, because, to tell the truth, I was going to show it to my cousins and consult them about it. I thought it probable they had noticed the shoes ‘Miss Wyndham’ wore the other evening if they were the peculiar-looking ones in question, and that they would be able to tell me where to find her.”

Ella had had hard work to keep down her impatience during this long explanation, and when he came to the word “shoe” her eyes danced with delight.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “if you have found my slipper I can’t thank you enough. You don’t know how miserable I have been about it,” and she went on to tell how her anxiety to hear if it had been found had brought her to the lodge that morning. “It must be mine,” she went on; “it is too impossible that such a queer accident should have happened to any one else the same evening. But please let me see it, that I may be quite sure.”

Philip drew a little parcel out of his pocket and held it out to Ella, who eagerly unwrapped it. Yes—there it lay—the dainty little old-world slipper, with infinite pathos about its mellow satin and quaint buckle to any one who knew its history.

Ella looked inclined to kiss it.

“Oh, how pleased I am,” she said. “Do tell me where you found it and all about it—and how odd it was that you should have noticed the slippers I had on and known it was mine.”

Sir Philip looked at her quizzically.

“I must take your word for it, I suppose, that itisyours,” he said. “By rights, you know, you should try it on, at least after Madelene and Ermine have done so.”

“What nonsense,” Ella exclaimed. “You are not in earnest?”

It was not till some time afterwards that she understood what he had meant.

“I can show you the fellow to it, if you like,” she added.

“Well—perhaps that would do as well,” he agreed, looking much amused.

“And as for trying it on, thatwouldn’tconvince you,” she said after a moment’s reflection, “for they’re too big for me. They weren’t made for me—”

“Scarcely, unless—you are even more of a fairy personage than I have suspected. The slippers must be thirty years old at least. If you were grown-up thirty years ago, you look young for your age,” he said.

Ella laughed.

“Yes, I see,” she answered. “But, by the by, I wonder you never saw them before. They belonged to your sis—no, she couldn’t have been your sister—what was she to you, then, Clarice Cheynes?” and she glanced up in his face with a little frown of perplexity on her own.

A light broke over Philip’s.

“They werehers!” he exclaimed, “and poor granny disinterred them for you to dance in!”

“I am her godchild,” Ella replied, rearing her head a little as she spoke.

“Of course. I only meant, what I am sure you think too, that it was very good of her. People are sometimes more selfish about feelings of that kind than about anything else. No—I never saw the slippers before, but I know that granny has a room where she treasures up all the little possessions of my aunt—who never was my aunt—Clarice.”

“Did she die before you were born then?” asked Ella.

“Yes—she died the year my father and mother were married, and I was not their eldest child,” said Sir Philip, “though all the others died as babies.”

They were near the house by this time. Ella looked up dubiously.

“Perhaps you will get on your horse again now,” she said, “and ride up to the door. My sisters are expecting you, I know—perhaps you will tell them of having met me, and found out who I was.”

“Will you not tell them yourself?” he said.

“No, I am going round the other way, behind the house. I have no longer any interest in watching for the groom,” Ella replied, “and I would rather you told my sisters, please.” She hesitated a little—“They, Madelene, might be a little annoyed, at—at my having been at the lodge, and all that.”

Philip looked surprised.

“I don’t think that is at all the sort of thing to vex Maddie,” he said. “Indeed it is rather in Ermine’s own line, I should say.”

But Ella still looked doubtful, and hurried off, half smiling, but with a gesture that implied her preference for not making one at the forthcoming interview.

Philip mounted and rode up,en règle, to the door, where, in answer to his inquiries, he was told that Miss St Quentin was at home and in the library.

There, sure enough, he found his elder cousin. She started up as he came in.

“Oh, Philip, that’s right,” she exclaimed. “We were just hoping you would come before luncheon. It is so nice to have you at home again,” she added affectionately.

“It is nice tobehome again,” he replied, as he went up to the fire and stood warming his hands at the blaze. Then there fell a little silence.

“Madelene,” said Sir Philip at last, “you haven’t yet introduced me to you sister Ella.”

“No,” Miss St Quentin replied, “there has not yet been any opportunity for my doing so,” she was beginning, when she suddenly and unaccountably stopped. “If you will ring, Philip,” she said, “I will send to tell both Ermine and Ella to come.”

But Philip did not move towards the bell.

“I don’t want them to come just yet,” he said. “I want to talk to you a little first. And besides, Ella is out.”

“Ella out,” repeated Madelene, looking up and changing colour slightly. Her manner seemed rather constrained and nervous. “How do you know?” her glance at him said.

Philip smiled.

“Yes,” he said, “I know what you are looking so ‘funny’ about, Maddie, as we used to say when we were children. You cannot sham the very least bit in the world; you never could, you know. Yes—I have met Ella, and the mystification is at an end. But by Jove what it ever began for, I cannot imagine. Will you not enlighten me?”

Miss St Quentin grew more and more uneasy.

“No,” she said, “I can’t. It—it was a freak of Ermine’s, and Aunt Anna took it up and joined in it, soIcould not oppose it, though to tell you the truth I never liked it. Of courseat the beginningit was altogether accidental; we had no idea—Ermie and I, I mean—of Aunt Anna’s getting papa to let Ella go to the ball—we had done our utmost to persuade him, but he wouldn’t. And then your being there was unexpected—and they made a muddle of Ella’s name: all that came about of itself.”

“Yes,” said Philip. “I see. But I see, too, how cleverly you all—no, not so much you, Maddie—joined to keep up the mistake, though upon my word I can’t see any point in it. I cannot find fault with my grandmother, but I shall have it out with Ermine.”

Madelene looked distressed; she saw that Philip was on the point of being angry.

“It is my clumsiness,” she said. “If you had seen Ermine first it would have been all right. She would have made you see it differently—but don’t be vexed about it, Philip. I do beg you not to be. I dosowant to have no more worries in which Ella is concerned. I am so tired of misunderstandings and all that kind of bother.”

Philip took her up at once.

“Have you had many bothers, poor Maddie?” he said. “Is she—is Ella not—not nice and gentle with you?”

Madelene felt as if she could have bitten her tongue off for having spoken so ill-advisedly.

“No, of course I didn’t mean to say anything against Ella,” she replied quickly. “You shouldn’t take one up so, Philip. It makes me think Ermine was right.”

“Right in what? Maddie, I am tired of all these half-speeches and cross-purposes. And I foresee I shall very likely have a quarrel with Ermine if you won’t speak out. What was she right in, and why did she want me to make your young sister’s acquaintance without knowing who she was.”

“She thought—as it had happened so—it was not our doing at first, remember—she thought you would like Ella better, judge her for herself as it were, if you met her as a stranger. Ermie has fancied you were a little prepossessedagainstElla, and, I think,” Miss St Quentin went on, consideringly, “Ithink, perhaps she blames herself a little for its being so. You remember—that day when Ella first arrived—Ermine had been really hardly fair about her.”

Philip sat listening.

“Well?” he said, after waiting as if for his cousin to continue.

“That’s all,” said Madelene. “It really is, Philip. I can’t tell you any more of what Ermine thinks or doesn’t think, and as it is, I didn’t want to tell you this. You might have treated it, I do think, as a simple little piece of fun. But now that I have said so much, I trust you to make no to-do about it.”

“I shall have it out with granny,” remarked Philip; “but that’s our own affair, hers and mine.” But he said no more about quarrelling with Ermine.

After a while he looked up and related to Madelene how he and Ella had met. A variety of expressions crossed Madelene’s face as he spoke.

“I wish you had not met her for the first time—”

“But it wasn’t the first time,” Philip interrupted.

“Well—you know what I mean—the first time athome, in that extraordinary guise. She must have looked comical,” said Madelene, laughing however. “She is very impulsive.”

“Impressionable, I should say,” said Philip. “And very warm-hearted. I like to see that sort of impulsiveness,” he added heartily, watching Madelene’s face rather closely the while.

Again a slightly uneasy look stole over it.

“Yes,” she said, “it was kind, thoroughly kind of her to help poor Hetty.”

But even in this cordial praise there was a suggestion of reserve which did not escape Philip.

“Cross-purposes. They’re all at cross-purposes,” he thought, “and I’m afraid Maddie’s in a mood for a good long ride on her hobby-horse at present. Madelene,” he said suddenly after some moments silence, “you’ve had a letter from Bernard lately. I know you have, for he wrote to me by the same mail.”

“In that case I need not give you any news, as you will have heard it all direct,” Miss St Quentin replied dryly.

“Come now, Maddie, I know what that means. You don’t want to talk about him. Is there no change then—do you see no prospect of any?”

“None at all,” Madelene replied, in a voice which she strove to make as expressionless as possible.

“It’s rather hard upon Omar, I must say,” said Philip; and if his object were to rouse his cousin, he succeeded.

“Did I ever say it wasn’t hard on him?” she exclaimed. “Is it my fault? Have I left undoneanythingto make him give it up?”

“I don’t say you have. I don’t say that in that way you are to blame,” said Philip quietly; “always allowing that the obstaclesareas insuperable as you make out.”

“They are more so—worse and worse,” said Madelene, with a rather wintry smile.

“Then you will forbid his coming home, as he can now, I suppose?”

“I have no right to do so, but if he does, I—”

The rest of her sentence was left to the imagination, for at that moment the door opened, and Ermine, followed by Ella, made her appearance.

Ermine gave no one time to feel awkward.

“It is too bad of you, Philip, and of you, Ella, too,” she said laughing, “to have balked me of my fun. It would have been too lovely to see you both looking so astonished.”

“I am not very fond of looking ridiculous for the amusement of my friends, though I would do a good deal to oblige you, Ermine,” said Sir Philip dryly.

Ella’s eyes sparkled with satisfaction. She would not like Sir Philip Cheynes to speak toherin that tone, she said to herself. But Ermine did not seem to mind in the least.

“I can stand your withering speeches, my dear boy,” she said coolly. “It was great fun all the same, and Aunt Anna enjoyed it as much as I did. You can have it out with her, if you like, when you go home.”

“I intend to do so,” he replied.

Ella stood glancing from one to the other with a rather comical look of perplexity on her pretty face. They seemed on very free and easy terms, these sisters of hers with their cousin. Somehow she had not quite realised it, and it surprised her a little. She had never seen anything quite of the same kind before. It was not flirtation, and yet—she was not by any means sure but that the brother and sisterly love covered some deeper and tenderer feeling, and she watched and listened with peculiar curiosity. Madelene, she observed, looked up with some anxiety when she heard the bandying of words between Ermine and her cousin.

“Philip,” she said half reproachfully in a low voice—he was standing near her—“you promised me?”

Sir Philip turned, with the smile which was one of his charms.

“Don’t be afraid, Maddie,” he said almost tenderly, it seemed to Ella. “Ermine, my dear, we must not evenplayat quarrelling; it troubles dear old Mad.”

“Shall we kiss and be friends then—eh, Phil?” said Ermine saucily; and when Sir Philip began something about taking her at her word, and she ensconced herself defiantly behind her elder sister’s chair, Madelene laughed with hearty pleasure, her whole face lighted up with satisfaction at seeing that there was no real danger of misunderstanding between the two.

“I have it,” said Ella to herself. “It isn’t Ermine herself so much. It is Madelene who wants Philip for her;thatexplains the keeping me out of his way when I first came, and all the rest of is. I wonder if my godmother wishes it too? Yet the trick the other night can hardly have been on that account. I don’t see any object in it. I suppose it was just a freak of Ermine’s, and that Madelene and my godmother too gave in to her. Ermineisso spoilt.”

But she was interrupted in these wise and profound cogitations. Ermine suddenly gave an exclamation.

“Oh dear,” she said. “I am forgetting to give you this note from Mrs Belvoir. I met James with it as I was crossing the hall.”

“A note only—no parcel,” said Madelene in a tone of disappointment. “I am so sorry, Ella,” she went on after running her eyes down the two or three hurried lines which the envelope contained. “I am so sorry. Mrs Belvoir knows nothing of the—of your lost property. I am so sorry for you, dear.”

A pleasant light spread over her cousin’s face as he caught the last words. They seemed to assure him of Madelene’s kindliness and sympathy. Ella too was touched by them.

“About the shoe, you mean,” she said. “Oh, Madelene, I was just going to tell you. I am not surprised or disappointed for,”—here she glanced at Philip—“won’t you tell them how it was?” she went on, half shyly; “I don’t think I heard quite exactly how or when you happened to find it.”

“Youfound it! Phil found it! oh, how lovely!” cried Ermine. “Have you got it in your pocket, Philip, or were you afraid of sitting down upon it and smashing it?”

Philip frowned a little.

“Out with it,” said Ermine, “then—what should you do then?—we’ll have to skip the herald part of the business. Go down on your knees—isn’t that it?—and present it first to Maddie and then to me. Of coursewecan’t get it on, and then you summon—”

Philip began to look distinctly annoyed; Ella, notwithstanding her usual quickness, seemed merely bewildered.

“I have not got it,” said Sir Philip; “of course I returned it at once to its rightful owner.”

“I have got it,” said Ella. “It is up stairs with its fellow. Sir Philip gave it to me when we met. Would you mind telling where you found it?”

“It was just outside the hall door at the Manor,” the young man replied. “I was standing there not long after my last dance with—withMiss Wyndham,” he added with a little smile, “and saw it lying—the buckle gleaming in the moonlight.”

“Likeglass” interrupted Ermine; “dear me, you are quite poetical, Philip. It must have been that time you went to catch some friends of yours whom you wanted to say good-night to before they left.”

“Yes,” said Philip, simply, “it was.”

And Ella fixed her brown eyes on him as he spoke.

Back to IndexNext