"What is to keep her here a moment, if she chooses to go?" asked Ellen.
Charlotte hesitated a little.
"She is not likely to choose to go," she said.
"I am not so sure. There is a great deal—oh, a great deal in Elaine which none of us have ever seen," replied her sister. "It sometimes frightens me to think how little I know about her."
"I cannot imagine what you mean," said Charlotte, in the blank, dry tone she always used when she could not understand what was said.
"You will see some day," said Ellen, which Micaiah-like prophecy exasperated her sister the more.
"I think Ellen is right," said Emily, suddenly.
She had taken very little part in the discussion, but it was always assumed in the family that Emily would agree with Charlotte. The open desertion of this unfailing ally bereft the already much irritated lady of the power of speech.
"I mean about having the boy Brabourne to stay here," said Emily, "I have thought of the same thing myself more than once—that Elaine ought to get acquainted with him, and that the only way to do it would be to have him here, as we dislike the Ortons so much. I don't want people to think that we grudge him his share of the inheritance, and I think it looks like that, if we ignore him so persistently."
This was putting the matter on a ground less high than Ellen's, and one, therefore, more easily grasped by the others.