“Right in what? Maddie, I am tired of all these half-speeches and cross-purposes. And I foresee I shall very likely have a quarrel with Ermine if you won’t speak out. What was she right in, and why did she want me to make your young sister’s acquaintance without knowing who she was.”
“She thought—as it had happened so—it was not our doing at first, remember—she thought you would like Ella better, judge her for herself as it were, if you met her as a stranger. Ermie has fancied you were a little prepossessed against Ella, and, I think,” Miss St Quentin went on, consideringly, “I think, perhaps she blames herself a little for its being so. You remember—that day when Ella first arrived—Ermine had been really hardly fair about her.”
Philip sat listening.
“Well?” he said, after waiting as if for his cousin to continue.
“That’s all,” said Madelene. “It really is, Philip. I can’t tell you any more of what Ermine thinks or doesn’t think, and as it is, I didn’t want to tell you this. You might have treated it, I do think, as a simple little piece of fun. But now that I have said so much, I trust you to make no to-do about it.”
“I shall have it out with granny,” remarked Philip; “but that’s our own affair, hers and mine.” But he said no more about quarrelling with Ermine.
After a while he looked up and related to Madelene how he and Ella had met. A variety of expressions crossed Madelene’s face as he spoke.
“I wish you had not met her for the first time—”
“But it wasn’t the first time,” Philip interrupted.
“Well—you know what I mean—the first time at home, in that extraordinary guise. She must have looked comical,” said Madelene, laughing however. “She is very impulsive.”