The Third Miss St Quentin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ella listened, not without curiosity.

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

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

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

Madelene looked a little surprised.

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

Ella repeated her question in another form.

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

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

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

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

Ella grew crimson.