"I'm so—so surprised!" she faltered.
"I admit that she is young enough to be my daughter, but surely the drawback goes for nothing if I am prepared to accept it. Consider the advantage for Stella!"
It was beyond Ellen's power to voice her feelings. She was only aware of a nebulous resentment that she could not define even to herself, much less aloud to the man who had caused it.
"As my wife," he went on, glad to give utterance to his arguments, "she will have an assured position, she will be suitably provided for, and she will be well looked after—I can promise you that!"
The last sentence sounded to Ellen more like a threat than a promise. Her silence puzzled Colonel Crayfield, annoyed him. He had anticipated expressions of delight, of gratitude; he felt he had every reason to expect them; yet this limp, bloodless old maid appeared totally unimpressed by the benefits he proposed to shower upon her niece, seemed even to disapprove of the whole business. He brushed from his mind the impatience her odd behaviour had aroused.
"I am in no doubt as to Stella's reception of my purpose," he could not resist telling her, with pointed satisfaction; and had Miss Ellen been capable of such vulgarity she would have sworn that she saw him lick his lips.... She shrank, instinctively disgusted, and gathered up her knitting with trembling hands.
"Will you excuse me?" she stammered; even her mother's orders could keep her no longer in the room; she felt as if Colonel Crayfield had suddenly turned into a sort of ogre. "I—I have a letter to write that must catch the post." And with this, one of the few lies she had ever told in her life, she sidled past him to the door.
He looked after her in contemptuous wonderment; then stepped out of the window in search of his future bride. Probably she was eating gooseberries, and the kitchen garden had this advantage, that it was not overlooked by windows, though it was hardly the spot he would have chosen for love-making. But Stella was nowhere to be found, and returning at last to the house, he had no better luck: the place seemed deserted. Where had they all hidden themselves?
He could not know that Stella was an unwilling prisoner upstairs, helping Aunt Augusta to sort household linen; that Mrs. Carrington, still resting, believed him to be enjoying the society of Ellen, whereas Ellen had locked herself into her bedroom, helplessly perturbed.