"I believe he'll marry Ella," she blurted out. "She began to worm herself in the moment you had left. And it's going on now. That's what makes me so unhappy, being away."
Caroline was too surprised for the moment to say anything. An uneasy feeling came over her that she had been too immersed in her own happiness to have cared much what was happening to those others whom she loved.
Barbara went on. "He writes to me regularly," she said, "as he has always done. But his letters are full of her. She always seem to be there, whenever he comes down; or he goes over to Surley. He stayed there from Friday till Tuesday last week, instead of going home. He says that she has done a lot to make up to him for not having us. That's how she does it, I suppose. I never liked her as much as the rest of you did, and now she's showing what she is."
Caroline put this aside for the time. Her mind was working. "I asked her to look after Daddy when I went away," she said. "She has written to me about him, and I've been glad. I never thought what you think, darling. She has been almost like one of us. I don't think she can possibly think of him in that way, or he of her. There has been nothing in the letters of either of them to show it."
"Well, he doesn't want me, anyhow," said Barbara. "Perhaps I'm jealous, but if there were nothing else I don't see why she should put herself in my place."
"Poor old pet!" said Caroline, kissing her. "Daddy couldn't get you back again directly after you had come over here, to finish up. When you do get home you'll be just as much to him as B and I have been. You know he loves you just as much, but we are older and—"
"Oh, I'm not grumbling about that. He has always been perfectly sweet to me, and he hasn't realised that I'm no longer a child, any more than you did up to a little time ago. But I was so looking forward to taking your and B's place with him—I know I couldn't do it as well, but I should have tried—and now she comes in to spoil it all. I hate her."
"Why do you hate her, darling? Why have you never liked her as we have?"
"I don't know. It's just that I haven't. Perhaps a little because she has tried to make me. I didn't exactly hold out, but somehow I couldn't. I suppose I knew all the time that this was in her."