“And what did Mrs Robertson say?” asked Madelene.
“She didn’t say much. Indeed I didn’t give her any opportunity. She had a headache this morning, no wonder, and didn’t come down. So I just packed up a few things and told the servants to say I’d gone out, and I went to the railway and – came off here. Naturally I came here,” she repeated, her tone acquiring again a shade of defiance, in reality the veil of some unacknowledged misgiving.
Madelene did not at once reply. She sat there, her eyes gazing out of the window before her, in what Ella thought a very aggravating way.
“Do you not agree with me?” the younger sister asked after a moment’s silence. Shyness was unknown to Ella, as were hesitation and patience when she was much concerned about anything.
Madelene turned round and looked at her.
“She’s angry,” thought Ella. “It is not any other feeling that makes her look like that.” And she kept her own bright eyes fixed upon her sister, which did not add to Miss St Quentin’s composure.
“Of course if you were obliged to go anywhere in this – this strange sort of way, you did right to come here,” said Madelene quietly. “But that is not the question at all. Were you right to leave your aunt’s house as you have done? That is the thing.”
“Yes,” said Ella coolly, “under the circumstances I think I was quite right.”
“Without consulting papa, without talking it over with Mrs Robertson, without – without,” Miss St Quentin went on, a sudden sensation of something very like temper nerving her to say it – “without in the least considering our – Ermine’s and my – convenience?”
Ella gazed at her in unfeigned surprise, for a moment or two she was too astonished to feel indignant.
“I don’t understand you,” she said. “Is it usual for sisters to be upon such terms? Is a daughter expected to beg and apologise like a stranger, before getting leave to come home – home where she has a right to be, and from which she was banished without her wishes being consulted in the least?”
“You were a baby,” said Madelene. “You could not have been consulted. And – well the thing was done and this has not been your home, and it is no use talking in that exaggerated, theatrical sort of way, Ella. I shall do my best, my very best,” and here there was a little tremor in her voice, “to make you happy and content with us, and so I know will Ermine, but I can’t say that in what you have done to-day I think you have acted wisely, or – or rightly. What papa will say about it I don’t know. I – I did not mean to put forward any inconvenience to myself, or ourselves, in any prominent way.”
She had already regretted the allusion to her sister and herself that she had made. It was, she felt, both unwise and inconsistent with the resolution she had come to.
Ella did not answer.
“Will you come out for a little?” Madelene went on. “We have been having tea – Ermine and I and – and our cousin – on the lawn. You would like a cup of tea, would you not? I am afraid your room will not be ready yet. We have been making some changes, and the rooms we intend for you are to be papered and painted next week. In the meantime we must consider how best to arrange.”
“I am sorry to give you so much trouble,” said Ella coldly. “I should have thought – it surely cannot be difficult for the third daughter to have a room just as you and Ermine have. But of course you are right – I am a stranger, and it is no good pretending I am not.”
“That was not what I meant at all,” said Madelene. But again Ella made no reply.
“I must take care what I say,” she was thinking to herself, “or I shall be called ‘exaggerated’ and ‘theatrical,’ again.”
Madelene opened the window and stepped out. “Shall we go this way?” she said. “It is nearer than round by the front door.”
Ella followed her.
“I am to be a younger sister when it comes to questions of precedence and that kind of thing, it appears,” she thought. “But a stranger when it suits the rest of the family to consider me so.”
There was something soothing however to her impressionable feelings in the beauty all around her; it was a really exquisite evening and the girl was quick to respond to all such influences.
“How lovely!” she said impulsively.
Madelene turned. There was a smile on her face, almost the first Ella had seen there; the quiet, somewhat impassive countenance seemed transfigured.
“Yes,” she said, “it is lovely. I am glad for you to see it again for the first time on a day like this, though to us, and I think you will agree with us when you have lived here long enough, Coombesthorpe has a charm of its own in every season.”
Ella opened her lips to reply, but before she had time to do so, she caught sight of a figure hastening towards them over the lawn.
“Oh,” said Madelene, “here is Ermine. Yes! Ermie,” she called out, before the new-comer was quite close to them, “it is she – it is really Ella.”
Chapter Four
Back in the Nursery
Ella’s eyes rested on her second sister with admiration scarcely less than that which her first glance at Madelene had aroused.
“At least,” she thought to herself, for a moment throwing her prejudice and irritation aside, “at least I have no reason to be anything but proud of my belongings. They are both beautiful.”
Ermine who was tall also, though an inch or two shorter than Madelene, stooped to kiss her. And her kiss seemed to Ella less cold than her elder sister’s.
“I shall like her the best,” she rapidly decided, for she was much given to rapid decisions.
“You have quite taken us by surprise, Ella,” said Ermine, in a tone which told nothing. The truth was that she was on the look-out for some sign or signal from Madelene as to what was the meaning of this sudden invasion and in what spirit it was to be met. For though they were not absolutely free from small differences of opinion in private, the mutual understanding and confidence existing between the sisters were thorough and complete, and even had this not been the case, they would never have allowed any outsider to suspect it.
Madelene caught and rightly interpreted Ermine’s unspoken inquiry.
“Ella has thought it right,” she began in a somewhat constrained tone, “to come home sooner than was arranged, on – on account of annoyances which she has been exposed to at Mrs Robertson’s and – ”
”‘Annoyances,’” flashed out Ella, thereby giving Ermine her first glimpse of the fieriness of which Madelene had already in the last quarter of an hour seen a good many sparks, ”‘annoyances,’ do you call them? I think that is a very mild term for unendurable, unbearable insult, and – ”
“Ella,” said Madelene quietly, “you have told me quite as much as I want to hear at present. Papa will be home soon and then you can see what he says. In the meantime it seems to me very much better to drop the subject – it would only leave a painful association with the beginning of your life here to do nothing but uselessly discuss disagreeables. The thing is done – you have left your aunt’s and you are now with us. Neither Ermine nor I need to say anything about it and it is probably much better that we should not.”
“Very well,” said Ella, with