The Third Miss St Quentin

“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 like her than anything else,” said Ermine, calmly.

“Ermine!” said Madelene.

But Philip turned to her with another question.

“Are you sure,” he said, “that Mrs Robertson may not already have explained things to Ella? If so, it would be better to know it.”

“I am sure she can’t have told her what she doesn’t know herself,” said Madelene. “Papa’s losses made no practical difference to her; she has always received anything she wanted for Ella – to do her justice she has never been the least grasping – from us, but in his name just as before. We begged him to let it be so, and it has never come to much.”

“Then do you think she has brought the child up very simply?” asked Philip.

“No – that is to say, I fancy she has been indulged a good deal as to her personal wishes. Mrs Robertson was comfortably off, though she had not a large house. I think all she has ever taken from papa or us has been literally spent on little Miss Ella herself. And they went to the South of France two winters, you know.”

Philip did not speak for a minute or two.

Then he said slowly, —

“As things are, perhaps it is as well that Ella does not know more. But – had they remained as they were, I don’t know but that Mrs Robertson had a right to be told of Uncle Marcus’s losses. Indeed, it might have influenced her plans, possibly have prevented her marrying again, had she known the child had nothing to look to in the future.”

Madelene reddened.

“She has something to look to in the future,” she said, “she has us. And I’m quite sure nothing of the kind would have stopped her aunt’s marrying again.”

”‘No fool like an old fool,’ and everybody knows there’s nothing on earth as obstinate as a fool. You’re forgetting what you just said, Phil,” said Ermine.

“No, I’m not. I didn’t say it would have stopped it once she had got it into her head. I meant it might have prevented her ever thinking of it,” Philip replied.

“I don’t see that it would have made any difference. Mrs Robertson could never have left Ella anything except savings, which couldn’t have come to much. But do leave off talking about money, Philip – I perfectly hate it. Ermie and I have been driven into hating it in the last two or three years since we came of age.”

“And leave off talking about Ella, too, for a bit, do,” said Ermine. “I mean to do my duty by her when she comes, but oh! I am so tired of the subject! Don’t you think we might have tea now, Maddie? I don’t believe papa will be back for ever so long.”

“Certainly – it would be nonsense to wait for him – will you – oh, thank you, Philip, yes, just ring the bell at the side-door, twice. They understand. What a comfort it is to have some one who knows our little ways!”

“A tame cat,” said Philip meekly, “Well, thank you. You are not so lavish of civil speeches to me, you and Ermine, as to make me inclined to quarrel with even the ghost of one.”

“Come now, that’s not quite fair,” said Ermine, as the kettle and hot cakes duly made their appearance, “one doesn’t make civil speeches to one’s best friends, one keeps them, like calling cards, for acquaintances.”