“Well, it isn’t my doing. I hate mystifications,” said Madelene. “However as Aunt Anna is mixed up in it I suppose it will be all right. But—no, Ermine, I’m afraid Ella is not the sort of wife we should wish for Philip. And I’m afraid of letting myself wish it, lest I should really be influenced by selfish motives, for no doubt it might make things easier.”
“You’re enough to provoke a saint,” said Ermine. “However I don’t suppose either you or I will have much power to ‘make or mar’ in the matter. If it is to be, it will be—so far we haven’t meddled; we didn’t originate their meeting as they did.”
“People always take refuge in that sort of fatalism when they want to throw off responsibility,” said Madelene. “I don’t believe in fatality about marriages any more than about anything else. But I shall not interfere, I am far too uncertain of its being a good thing for Philip.”
“Maddie has had an Indian letter, and she has got a fit of extra conscientiousness in consequence,” thought Ermine. “If I were Bernard, I don’t think I’d stand it.”
And yet as she looked at her sister, and saw the gentle sadness in her eyes, and noted the increasing signs of endurance and uncomplaining patience in the delicate features, a sort of rush of tenderness came over her. No one better deserved to be happy than her own sweet Madelene, she said to herself.
The evening passed peacefully. Colonel St Quentin was pleased to have his daughters with him again, and pleased too with himself for feeling so much more cordial and affectionate than heretofore towards his youngest child. And Madelene was pleased too to see him so, for jealousy formed no part of her nature, though her exaggerated conscientiousness and self-questioning sometimes took the appearance of suspiciousness of others. Ella’s quick eyes detected her elder sister’s satisfaction at her father’s kindlier tone, and she felt puzzled by it.
“She does seem as if she wanted papa and me to get on better together, after all,” she thought, and the idea softened her own manner in turn. Besides this, she was, though she would on no account have confessed it, both tired and sleepy; the unusual excitement, more than actual fatigue had told upon her, and she was not sorry when Ermine, openly acknowledging that she was quite ready to go to bed, proposed that they should all say good-night.
“It’s quite disgraceful to be so done up after such a very mild amount of dissipation,” she said laughingly. “Philip would make great fun of us. He is coming over to-morrow, Maddie, you know.”
“Yes, papa says Aunt Anna left a message from him to tell us so,” said Madelene thoughtlessly.
Ella pricked up her ears at this.