To his surprise the girl did not laugh, or even smile. She looked up at him with a curious expression.
“I don’t think I like that story,” she said. “I have never liked it since I was a baby. And yet—somehow—it seems always coming up,” she added in a lower voice.
Philip’s curiosity increased.
“You don’t mean to say,” he said laughingly, “that if I call upon you to-morrow morning I shall find you scrubbing the kitchen pots and pans?”
Ella’s face crimsoned.
“You can’t call upon me,” she retorted sharply; “you don’t know where I live nor anything about me.”
“Except your name—Miss Wyndham,” he repeated, slightly accentuating the last two words.
The girl turned quickly, as just at that moment Mr Louis Belvoir’s voice was heard.
“Our dance, Miss Winton, I think,” he said.
“And I may claim the next but one then, I hope?” Sir Philip hastened to add.