“Are you speaking of Lady Cheynes, my godmother?” she said. “Then are you Sir Philip Cheynes? Oh, how fearfully stupid of me not to know! But,” and her bewilderment took the same direction as his, “why did none of them introduce us properly? Of course I never thought of you being here; I understood till yesterday that you were up in the north somewhere. I did not hear your surname at all, and I was not sure if you were ‘Sir Philip,’ though I remembered that much. If I had thought of it—it is not such a very common name—but I just never thought of you, of my godmother’s grandson, at all.”
“I see,” Philip replied; “and they all lent themselves to the—‘mystification,’ that is plain. I confess I don’t see much point in it.”
He spoke stiffly, but he was not resenting it on her—indeed he had no reason to do so, but when people are vexed they are not always reasonable—so Ella remained gracious. Suddenly his eyes fell on her quaint figure—she had forgotten all about her personal travesty by this time—and a half dubious, half quizzical smile lighted up his face as if in spite of himself.
“It seems mystifications all round,” he said. “It is, to say the least, an extraordinary coincidence that I should light upon you like this, all perfectly got up in the Aschen-puttel style.”
“You are very,”—“impertinent” was on the tip of Ella’s tongue, but she suppressed it. “I daresay he has heard of all my iniquities from Madelene. I am not going to have him endorse her opinion of me,” she thought, and a very charming smile stole over her face, as, colouring again a little, she replied gently, “You are right. It is very queer that we should have met again like this,” and she went on to explain Hetty’s domestic tribulations.
“It was most kind of you,” said Philip warmly. “But,” as at that moment the little girl and her father joined them, “don’t you think you had better return to your own character now? It is very cold, too. Rose, you mustn’t let Hetty keep house alone in this style, my good fellow,” he went on to the gardener; “the child might have fallen into the fire and been badly burnt.”
It had never happened before, and never should again, the man assured him civilly. He had not known of his wife’s absence; she had, so Hetty had been charged to explain, been tempted to take advantage of the unexpected chance of getting her boy to the doctor’s; and by the invariable rule of contrary, Rose himself had been detained at work much later than usual. While the gardener was thus explaining matters, Ella had run in to the lodge, and a moment later reappeared in hat and jacket, minus the apron and the smuts.
“Good-bye, Hetty,” she said, and “good-bye Sir Philip Cheynes,” she added, turning to him. “I am going a little further, towards the outer gate.”
Philip looked at her.
“Will you not take your constitutional in another direction?” he said quietly. “There is—I have something to say to you, which I may not find another opportunity for.”