Chapter Thirteen.
Ermine Misses the Fun.
A mist seemed suddenly to roll away from Sir Philip’s brain.
“Miss Ella,” he repeated, with a sort of gasp; “you don’t mean to say—you can’t be little Ella St Quentin?”
“Why not?” Ella retorted, sharply still—the “little” was unfortunate. “I am Ella St Quentin and I have never pretended to be any one else; but at my age people are not spoken of as if they were three or four years old.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Philip.
“And,” she went on, “I don’t understand why you should speak of me in that way at all. I don’t know who you are.”
But Philip did not at once reply—his thoughts for the moment were pursuing another train. “I can’t make out,” he said, speaking more to himself than to her, “why they all mystified us. They must have known we were dancing together—Madelene, Ermine, certainly, and my grandmother must have—was it with her you came to the Belvoirs’?” he exclaimed suddenly. “Was that the reason of Granny’s strange freak?”
In her turn, Ella’s face looked first astonished, then illumined.