“Ermine,” she said in a low voice, “I am perfectly bewildered. Do you know I do believe Ella is here?”
“Ella?” Ermine repeated.
“Yes—dancing in the other room with Philip. If it is not she, I never saw such a likeness—never.”
“But,” said Ermine, looking dazed, “if she is dancing with Philip, he would know, he would tell us.”
“He may not know who she is,” said Madelene impatiently, for once grasping the situation more rapidly than her sister. “He has never seen her. And if it is she, she has not come in her own name. Major Frost said she was a Miss Wyndham.”
Ermine looked relieved.
“Then it can’t be she,” she said. “She would never do such a thing. Knowing too that we were to be here—it would have been perfectly absurd.”
But Miss St Quentin still looked dissatisfied.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I feel as if I were dreaming. She is not only the very image of Ella, but her dress is uncommonly like the white tulle frock that I had made for her in case papa had given in. Ermine, if she has done such a thing—such a scandalous thing as to come here by herself trusting to us not to tell—it would be—I don’t know what we should do.”
“Your imagination is running away with you, Maddie,” said Ermine. “Still all the same I shall go and have a look at this remarkable young woman—quietly, you know, without letting her see me. There’s Major Frost looking as if he couldn’t think what’s the matter, and he is rather a gossip. I’ll meet you again in the tea-room after I have made my voyage of discovery.”