“You would like her to marry, wouldn’t you?” said Ella, calmly, though softly. But the calmness rather took Madelene’s breath away.
“Yes,” she said honestly, though the colour deepened a little in her fair face. “I should. But,” she went on rather confusedly, for to her there seemed something slightly coarse in the bald connection of the two ideas, “it isn’t exactly that—girls often marry just as happily who stay at home.”
Ah, thought Ella, I understand. “Is it far from here where Ermine is going?” she asked.
“Not very; still it is a new part of the country to her, which will make it all the nicer. Philip will be there part of the time, too. They are old friends of his. Mr Marchant’s half-brother (his mother married twice; her second husband is Lord Farrance) Guildford West, was at school and college with him. He was at the Manor. I dare say you danced with him. A small thin man, much smaller than Philip and not nearly so good-looking.”
“I don’t remember,” said Ella indifferently. “Then you are quite sure you wish me to go to-morrow to Cheynesacre?” she added.
“Of course,” Madelene repeated bewildered by the change in Ella’s tone, which had lost all its sympathetic softness again. “I am delighted that papa seems relaxing a little about you, and by degrees I hope it will be rather livelier for you here. If—” and here Madelene, cold, stately Madelene for the second time that afternoon blushed a little—“if Ermine were married, it would make everything seem brighter, I think.”
“Yes,” said Ella, “to you I suppose it would do so, if she married somebody you thoroughly liked. And—if she were to live near you, too.”
She spoke with a kind of clear cold precision which would have caught Madelene’s attention had she been less pre-occupied. But she was full of pleasureable excitement about Ermine’s plans, and it was almost with an effort that she listened to Ella.
“Yes, of course,” she replied half absently, “that would make it much nicer.”
And Ella drew her own conclusions.