"Do you consider that the Ortons would be a nice house for Elaine to be constantly visiting at?"
"No, Charlotte, I cannot say I do."
"Do you imagine it at all likely that we could have been on terms of any intimacy with Mrs. Brabourne and her brother without allowing Elaine to visit there?"
"It might have been difficult," Miss Ellen, with rising color was constrained to admit; "but I was not advocating intimacy exactly; only that Elaine should be on friendly terms with little Godfrey."
"Is she not on friendly terms? I am sure then it is not my fault. She sends him a card every Christmas and a present every birthday, and always writes to her step-mother once a year. I really do not see how one could go much further without the intimacy which you admit is undesirable," cried Charlotte, in triumph.
"I do not admit that it is undesirable for Elaine to be intimate with her brother," said Ellen, with firmness.
"And pray how is the brother to be separated from the Orton crew, with their Sunday tennis-parties, their actors and actresses, their racing and their betting?"
"By asking him down here to stay with his sister," said Ellen, quietly.
A pause followed, an awful pause, which to good little Miss Fanny boded so darkly, that she hurled herself into the breach with energetic good-will.
"Dear me!" she cried, "what a good idea! What a treat for dear Elaine! I wonder nobody ever thought of it before!"