She got up from her seat and half threw herself on the grass beside Madelene. But Madelene did not speak. “Of course,” Ermine went on, “I know it’s all quite right, and not only right but inevitable. And you’re as good and wise as you can be, Maddie. It was only that this morning I felt rather cross about it, and Philip and I couldn’t help showing each other what we felt. But go on, Maddie – say what you were going to say.”
“It is only the old thing,” said Madelene. “I think, and I shall always think what I did at the time, though I was only a child then, that it was a mistake to send Ella away to be brought up out of her own home and separated from her nearest relations. Of course it was not anticipated that the separation would be so long and complete a one as it has turned out – at least I suppose not.”
“I don’t know why it need have been so,” said Ermine, “only every time there has been anything said of her coming to us her aunt has put difficulties in the way.”
“There seemed sense in what she said,” Madelene replied; “it was not much use Ella’s coming here, just to get unsettled and her lessons interrupted, for a short visit. And then, of course, papa’s long illness was another reason.”
“And Mrs Robertson’s own wishes – the strongest reason of all,” added Ermine. “She may be a kind and good enough woman, but I shall always say she is very selfish. Keeping the child entirely to herself all these years, and now when she suddenly takes it into her head to marry again in this extraordinary way – she must be as old as the hills – poor Ella goes to the wall!”
“That’s probably the gentleman’s doing,” said Philip.
“Well then she shouldn’t marry a man who would do so,” said Ermine.
“I quite agree with you,” he replied drily, “but we all know there’s no fool like an old fool.”
“It is hard upon Ella, with whomever the fault lies – that is what I’ve been trying to get to all this time,” said Madelene. “If she had always looked upon this as her home, and felt that we were really her sisters, she would have grown up to understand certain things gradually, which, now when the time comes that she must know them, will fall upon her as a shock.”
“You mean about our money and this place?” asked Ermine.
“Of course – and about papa’s being, though I hate saying it, in reality a poor man.”
“Do you think there is any need for her to know anything about it for some time to come?” asked Philip gently, completely casting aside the bantering tone in which he had hitherto spoken.
Madelene looked up eagerly.
“Oh, do you think so, Philip?” she said. “I am so glad. It is what I have been thinking, but I know papa respects your opinion and it will strengthen what I have said to him.”
“Decidedly,” said Philip. “It seems to me it would be almost – brutal – I am not applying the word to any person, but to the situation, as it were – to meet the poor child, already sore probably at having been turned out of the only home she can really remember, with the announcement that the new one she is coming to is only hers on sufferance, and that her future is, to say the least, an uncertain one.”
“It would not be so for another day if we had more in our power,” said Madelene hotly.
“No, I know that – know it and understand it. But – a child of – how much? fifteen, sixteen?”
“Seventeen, seventeen and a quarter.”
“Well, even of seventeen and a quarter would have the haziest notions about law and legal obligations. No, gain her love and confidence first, by all means.”
“It is papa,” said Madelene rather disconsolately. “The best of men are, at times I suppose, a little unreasonable. Though he has given up the idea of a formal explanation to poor little Ella, still I am afraid he will wish us to be more – I don’t know what to call it, less treating her just like ourselves, than Ermie and I would wish,” and she looked up appealingly, her blue eyes quite pathetic in their expression.
“And she may misunderstand it – us,” added Ermine.
“But it is right, necessary to a certain extent that she should not be placed in exactly the same position that she would have as your very own sister,” said Philip firmly. “People should think of these awkward complications before they make second marriages, but once awkward positions do exist, it’s no good pretending they don’t. However, I think you are exaggerating matters, Maddie; unnecessarily anticipating an evil day which may, will, I feel sure, never come. Before this much-to-be-pitied young lady has to learn that she is not an heiress like her sisters, she may have learnt to love and trust those sisters as they deserve, and love casteth out other ugly things as well as fear.”
“Thank you, dear Philip,” said Miss St Quentin.
“And – grand discovery!” he exclaimed. “She’s not ‘out’. You can easily treat her more like a child at first, till she has got to know you. She cannot have been accustomed to much dissipation under the roof of the worthy Mrs Robertson.”
“No, none at all I fancy. But she has had her own way in everything there was to have it in I feel sure,” said Madelene. “And if we begin by snubbing her – ”
“Snubbing her, not a bit of it. It will make her feel herself of all the more importance if you will tell her Uncle Marcus thinks it better for her not to come out till she’s eighteen – neither of you came out till then?”
“I was nineteen,” said Ermine; “you know we were abroad all the year before. I thought it very hard then, but now I’m very glad. It makes me seem a year at least younger than I am,” she added naïvely.
“It’s only staving off, after all, I’m afraid,” said Madelene. “When she is eighteen or even nineteen, and has to come out, and wonders why papa won’t let her have everything the same as us and – ”
“Oh, Maddie, don’t fuss so,” said Ermine.
“Twenty things may happen before then to smooth the way.”
“I hope so,” said Miss St Quentin. But her tone was depressed.
“Scold her, Philip, do,” said Ermine. “If she worries herself so about Ella it will make me dislike the child before I see her, and that won’t mend matters.”
“When does she come?” Sir Philip asked.
“Next month,” Madelene replied.
“Do you think she feels it very much – the leaving her aunt, and coming among strangers as it were?” he asked.
“I don’t know. She cannot but be fond of her aunt, but she has said distinctly that she would not wish to go on living with her and her new husband. And of course it is time and more than time for her to come to us if this is ever to be her home. And though Mrs Robertson is marrying a wealthy man, she loses all she had as a widow, and certainly we should not have liked our sister to be dependent on a stranger.”
“You could have given Mrs Robertson a regular allowance for her, if that had been the only difficulty. But if this Mr what’s his name?”
“Burton,” said Ermine.
“If that Burton fellow is rich he would possibly have disliked any arrangement of that kind,” said Philip.
“He evidently wants to get rid of her,” said Madelene, smiling a little. “Some things in Mrs Robertson’s letters make me imagine that the third Miss St Quentin has a will of her own, and a decided way of showing it. She speaks of ‘dear Ella’s having a high spirit, and that Mr Burton was not accustomed to young people.’”
“And Ella called him ‘old Burton’ in a letter to papa,” added Ermine. “We told papa she must have left out the ‘Mr’, but for my part, I don’t believe she did. I think that expression has made me more inclined to