“I intend to do so,” he replied.
Ella stood glancing from one to the other with a rather comical look of perplexity on her pretty face. They seemed on very free and easy terms, these sisters of hers with their cousin. Somehow she had not quite realised it, and it surprised her a little. She had never seen anything quite of the same kind before. It was not flirtation, and yet—she was not by any means sure but that the brother and sisterly love covered some deeper and tenderer feeling, and she watched and listened with peculiar curiosity. Madelene, she observed, looked up with some anxiety when she heard the bandying of words between Ermine and her cousin.
“Philip,” she said half reproachfully in a low voice—he was standing near her—“you promised me?”
Sir Philip turned, with the smile which was one of his charms.
“Don’t be afraid, Maddie,” he said almost tenderly, it seemed to Ella. “Ermine, my dear, we must not even play at quarrelling; it troubles dear old Mad.”
“Shall we kiss and be friends then—eh, Phil?” said Ermine saucily; and when Sir Philip began something about taking her at her word, and she ensconced herself defiantly behind her elder sister’s chair, Madelene laughed with hearty pleasure, her whole face lighted up with satisfaction at seeing that there was no real danger of misunderstanding between the two.
“I have it,” said Ella to herself. “It isn’t Ermine herself so much. It is Madelene who wants Philip for her; that explains the keeping me out of his way when I first came, and all the rest of is. I wonder if my godmother wishes it too? Yet the trick the other night can hardly have been on that account. I don’t see any object in it. I suppose it was just a freak of Ermine’s, and that Madelene and my godmother too gave in to her. Ermine is so spoilt.”
But she was interrupted in these wise and profound cogitations. Ermine suddenly gave an exclamation.
“Oh dear,” she said. “I am forgetting to give you this note from Mrs Belvoir. I met James with it as I was crossing the hall.”
“A note only—no parcel,” said Madelene in a tone of disappointment. “I am so sorry, Ella,” she went on after running her eyes down the two or three hurried lines which the envelope contained. “I am so sorry. Mrs Belvoir knows nothing of the—of your lost property. I am so sorry for you, dear.”