Ermine seemed to play into her hands.
“How did you like young Belvoir, by the by, Ella?” she inquired. “He dances well, doesn’t he? What other men did you dance with?”
But Ella was not going to be trotted out, especially not before Madelene, whose eyes, she fancied, and perhaps not without reason, were fixed on her scrutinisingly.
“There were several,” she replied; “I didn’t hear all their names distinctly. Yes, I thought Mr Belvoir danced well, but there were one or two others who danced quite as well.”
“Oh, indeed,” said Ermine. “No one in particular, then?”
“Major Frost was very amusing,” said Ella.
Madelene, who had finished her tea, put down her cup and turned to the door.
“We had better go up stairs and take our things off, Ermine,” she said.
“I am afraid Ella is the reverse of ingenuous,” she said when they had left the library. “We know she danced more with Philip than any one. She is a regular woman of the world in the way she can keep back what she does not choose to tell—it would be only natural for her to ask us who he was, if she really did not know.”
“Oh, Maddie, I don’t think you are fair about her,” said Ermine. “And talking of not being ingenuous—she might accuse us of it when she comes to know him. She will know we must have seen her dancing with him, if she takes the trouble to think it over, and our not mentioning his being there may strike her.”