“Not much chance of his ever being my prince,” she thought with a sigh, realising now the place which for the last day or two she had allowed “the stranger,” as they say in the old romances, to occupy in her vague, pretty day-dreams. For the girlish imagination at eighteen “gallops apace.”
Down stairs in the library meanwhile Ella’s two sisters were sitting together. Philip had left, after giving, as if of himself, the suggestion as to not mentioning to Lady Cheynes the narrow escape of the slipper—a suggestion at once appreciated and accepted. Madelene was writing; Ermine, under cover of a book and some work at hand on a little table beside her, was in reality doing nothing, except from time to time glancing at her sister.
“Maddie,” she said at last.
Miss St Quentin stopped writing and looked round with a slight touch of impatience.
“What is it, Ermine?” she said. “If it is anything very particular I’ll leave off, but I do want to finish this letter. It must go to-morrow, and you know I can never count upon doing anything in the evening.”
“It is a letter for the Indian mail then, I suppose?” said Ermine.
“Yes.”
“I—I wish you’d tell me what you are saying, Maddie,” said Ermine hesitatingly. “You know I don’t ask out of officiousness or curiosity.”
“I don’t suppose you do; all the same I wish you would leave the subject. It doesn’t do any good and it only makes it harder for me.”
“Tell me at least what you have said,” urged Ermine.